Official Luthiers Forum!

A few thoughts:

- Boeing's current troubles with keeping their 737 Max aircraft in the air are largely due to a generational move away from an innovative engineering culture and toward management by accountants and the marketing department. Compounding that lack of innovation is the very large trough of public monies that Boeing has been feeding from... with the inevitable result of a guaranteed income stream being stasis, sloth, and the growth of a risk-adverse/entitlement-forward set of behaviors. This failure to innovate contrasts sharply with Airbus, where that bloated monstrosity assembled from the corpses of failing EuroZone aerospace companies has been forced to slim down and get in shape as they were weened off massive public subsidies from Brussels as well as the various state actors.

- Martin is not Boeing, but we did see a string of poor accounting or agenda-driven decisions made from the late 1930's through recent times. These include all of the warranty work reduction decisions made in the last century (e.g., aft-shift bracing, Popsicle braces, heavier bridge plates), the switch to ABS and ABS/PVC alloys for binding without suitable adhesives (tens of thousands of failing binding jobs on relatively young Martins due to the lack of a suitable adhesive), and more recently the Green adhesive and whisker crack debacles of the Oughts and Twenty-Teens that forced changes to Martin's terms of warranty. And - let us not forget - the ridiculous Brexit Mini-Martin model that proved just how tone-deaf a musical instrument making company's leadership could be as to their customer base's hot buttons.

- That Martin is embracing their version of innovation is actually encouraging, and can be de-risked by continuing with production of their more traditionally built models using proven techniques and materials.

- The bracing decoration in the shot (I hesitate to call it an engineering improvement) does remind me of that brief phase where everything had to have carbon-fiber-patterned decoration in the 1990-2005 period, as well as the joy that boys seem to find in using their new toys (3-D printers, diode and CO2 laser cutters, desktop CNC) for everything, no matter how inappropriate the application. At present, the carbon fiber trend seems quaint and somewhat dated, but I have high hopes that it will eventually acquire the cloying patina of Avocado and Harvest Gold appliances as time goes by.

On wood binding:



Martin's trouble keeping binding on their guitars in the Twenty-Teens had nothing to do with the binding materials themselves, but rather a misplaced faith in a 'greener' binding and purfling adhesive. Martin looked at Taylor's switch to lower VOC contact adhesives for binding and after some short-term testing, made that switch. What Martin failed to do was to accomplish either long-term testing or actual compatibility testing of that adhesive with their high-VOC lacquer finishing system. The result was that - whether ABS/PVC alloy, cellulose nitrate, or wood - guitars made using that adhesive saw large-scale failures within a few years of the 2012-2016 use window.

This binding mess should make the point that materials changes inserted into the production cycle due to virtue-signaling require the same degree of engineering scrutiny accomplished for changes done for more valid reasons.

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We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.

-Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel)

Amen, and amen. I've been saying for years the problem in businesses almost everywhere is putting bean counters in charge. You need the beans counted, but all they see is beans, and business is more than that. You cannot quantify everything in numbers. There are too many intangibles.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

As a design engineer I was always at odds with the sales department and the bean counters. Just the way it is. Good management will strike the correct balance, bad management won't. Sooner or later the market will sort out who got it right and who didn't.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The plastic binding may have been a 'classy' replacement for ivory back when man-made materials were new and exciting.

J DeRocher wrote:
" .. claiming that they fixed this supposed problem by making the center wedge of the three-piece back out of walnut."

I hate to say it, but Black walnut has properties that are very similar to soft maple. I suspect that the 'darker' sound of walnut is a matter of listening with the eyes.

I hadn't heard or read that wood bindings have also been coming loose. All of the many individual reports I've seen were for plastic binding. I suppose that could be a numbers thing though. I'm guessing the number of Martins made with wood binding has been only a small fraction of their total production.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Well I'm going to be the odd man/person out and flat out say that I appreciate the hell out of Martin and it's very possible that I may have never become a Luthier had we not had this iconic American company producing excellent products for over a century where these products were used to produce some of the most enjoyable music I have ever loved.

With around 130,000 guitars produced by Martin last year if Google has it correct Martin remains the standard that all others are judged against.

When I was learning to build I would take my lunches at the local Guitar Center sitting in the moldy, empty humidifier room checking out the Martin's, Gibsons, Taylors and Breedloves. The Martins were what had my attention and they became my personal standard for how I wanted my Heshtone guitars to be built in terms of quality.

Much of the ideas and tradition that went into my guitars (and many of your's too...) was Martin innovation, ideas and/or popularized production. And... I'm grateful and owe them, Martin thanks.

Disclaimer: I'm personally certified for Martin warranty work and I receive payment from Martin for the work that we do. In the past over a decade I've worked with Martin many times ALWAYS advocating for our mutual clients and I have found Martin to be the most committed producer of guitars to 100% and beyond customer satisfaction that I have ever dealt with. If there is a question Martin will intentionally error in favor of the client and I appreciate the hell out of that because that's our business model too.

So yes there were and are some binding failures since we are some of the ones who fixes many of these. But what's not mentioned here is that for the rest of your days if your binding falls off your Martin you can bring to a certified service center and have it repaired by knowledgable, handsome too Luthiers and it won't cost you a dime. Sh*t happens but how a company or individual steps-up is what really matters and Martin always steps up for their clients.

Now I'm not into virtue signaling either and if you are a fast Facebook friend of mine you know that I go on the nut, often... about virtue signaling.

But truth be told I don't see a producer of guitars addressing sustainable wood choices as virtue signaling. I see it as addressing a real and present AND growing market that I know for a fact exists. My friend Scott won't buy a guitar with any animal parts such as a bone nut on it. He's not alone and he's into sustainable wood too and so are many, many others.

This is not about my own personal preferences or what I see as BS this is about a growing market for sustainable materials used in the products we use. The demand is there or Martin and others would not be addressing this market.

With all this said it occurs to me that in my own efforts to dis virtue signaling I'm actually virtue signaling that I am against virtue signaling AND those who do it... Shame on me....

Anyway I sure hope that this forum is not populated by a bunch of people keen to sling crap at a very fine, iconic American guitar producer who is the standard bearer of the industry. It makes us look very narrow and if I were a prospective client of anyone doing this it would be a huge turn off to me.

So clearly Hesh here is posting in defense of Martin, our industry, and the idea that mistakes happen but it's what you do about them, how you stand behind your products and work that really is what should matter.

And with this said the Martin consumer warranty for their guitars is the best in the industry served by a huge network of qualified pros that have included some of the finest Luthiers in the world such as TJ Thompson, my business partner Dave Collins, Frank Ford RIP and many many others.

Martin is a very fine company, one of the very best and they always have been and I'm very grateful that they have earned this respect from those of us who service their products and those of us who enjoy the hell out being their very happy customers.

My CEO-7 being built for me as my employee/vendor guitar should be ready in a few months too and I'll be excited to get it. Going to name it after my recently departed RIP dear ole 92 year old Mom, Annie.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I am pleased to see some pearl-clutching on display here. More my mother's thing than mine, but it is nice to see those pesky fashion accessory gender norms being challenged by someone other than Harry Stiles and that appointee from the DoE famous for dress-shopping in the nearest airport baggage claim. Mr. Stock used to wear his utility kilt in the shop on occasion, claiming 'Scots Privilege' or similar nonsense, but that ended after a shower of grinder sparks nearly set both kilt and whatever was under that garment ablaze. Hilarity ensued, and some level of evident personal discomfort as well. Burn gel is your friend - if your shop first-aid kit does not contain a supply, I highly recommend ordering a reasonable quantity.

But I digress... for those favoring pearls during moments of heightened emotional response, please have the presence of mind not to actually break the string joining those pearls together while making that clutching movement - it is actually quite fragile, and the individual pearls are quite dangerous under foot on hard flooring surfaces.

It might be best to set aside any pecuniary interest and recognize that no one and no company is above criticism and recognition of their screw-ups, missteps, and bone-headed decisions. Neither Gibson nor Guitar Center - both large American corporations - escaped recent scrutiny here re: their own transgressions, so expecting a general exclusion for Martin is unwarranted (as opposed to original owner Martin neck resets, which are now un-warrantied beyond a handful of years after purchase).

On Martin warranty service: we saw both lovely repairs done under warranty and truly execrable work by authorized shops. We saw the same with Martin's Repair Shop, although to be fair, those questionable repairs all seem to be from the 2016-2019 time frame as Martin was deluged with the spider crack and green binding adhesive failure work. As has been suggested here before, it is likely best to go by reputation of the repair shop itself, rather than assume any company's warranty repair affiliates are uniformly well qualified, produce consist high quality work, and are adequately monitored.

Finally, I DID suggest that some level of innovation by Martin after the occasional misstep was likely a good thing, despite what would appear to be some degree of cosmetic adornment in the shot above. I suspect that in the fullness of time, we will determine just how successful those innovations might be.

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We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.

-Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel)

My condolences for your loss Hesh, and thanks for your defense of Martin.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I drop in and read the OLF from time to time, and have done so for quite a while. I appreciate some of the dialog on the OLF and, from time to time, am inclined to chime in an participate on a thread.

I work on thousands of guitars. Love Martins, especially the vintage ones. If I was to graph the number of binding repairs on Martins vs all other guitars, one would not see the line for all the other guitars because the Martin line is so high.

On the wood virtue signaling BS. It's simple but the problem is the virtue signalers are more worried about making a statement. The way the guitar industry (or manufacturers) explain this is simply to publish the various woods they use (count it in # of trees) ... and then put that in comparison to other industries. Guitar manufacturer's numbers are round off error. This alone .... God forbid facts, I know the virtue signalers hate facts that interfere with self-righteous attention seeking ... would demonstrate that the guitar industry is not a sustainability player because its consumption is nominal in most cases. It's like looking at pollution ... spend some time in central america, china, russia, or many other places in the world ... virtue signaling is about addressing the problem where it does not exist. It's about feeling good about doing something about something where one actually really can't do anything! What I find most curious about virtue signalers is that they claim an interest in the problem, don't actually take the time to understand where the problem is, then make sure to use the virtue signaling to displace the issue into their world, misdirecting attention from where the actual problem may lie. This kind of superlative discernment is a special human trait.

I love Martin, know people at the company. They also keep me employed with the number of guitars that come in - and I don't work in a certified Martin repair shop. If I was to list the # of Martins in the shop (year and work to be done), I'd gladly stack that number against anyone that is certified Martin. I'm not bragging, to the contrary, I'm saying we see that many WITHOUT the marketing pull of being certified with Martin. There is that much Martin repair work. I won't get into specifics but Martin's certified program is not what it was, and I know that from the amount of "fix what the Martin certified guy fixed" work that comes through the door, and in the large from first-hand commentary inside of Martin. Now this does not mean that there are not great shops that are certified Martin shops - there are of course. But it's hardly a quality badge. One's Mileage May Vary.

My customers know, if they are going to gig 250 shows/year, the workhorse is Taylor. I don't care for them much for the Taylor sound, but plugged in they are the Cummins of the guitar industry and will do a million miles of road abuse. That's been the observation doing repairs for years, and what my high-gigging clients experience. Can one do it with a Martin? Sure. Gibson? Sure. But as far as consistent construction and sustainable final product, Taylor has proven that out at scale. That's coming from someone that owns Martins, no Taylors (and don't care to), studied and repaired Martins, etc. The facts simply don't care what my feelings are.

As for these design changes, the guitar industry has demonstrated that tradition is about well-proven methods in outcome and longevity. Incremental improvement has risk and innovation has high risk. Time bears all this out so we'll see. I wonder about the repairability of some of the "innovations" that are proffered by some luthiers folks like the herald here, and some manufacturers. In the end it just drives up my income at the detriment of the owners.

As for making passive aggressive comments about people having opinions, not supposed to be critiquing brands, approaches, and so on ... I doubt anyone here needs to be lectured ... just know that those types of comments hit the teflon and slide off.

Wood is an anisotropic material. Drilling holes in braces creates areas of short grain that are prone to cracking. Routing channels in already thin plates creates stress risers (as Barry mentioned) that may allow a slight bump to crack along the trough.
The Martin Literature said they had "One foot in the Past and One foot in the Future" and I would add "one foot in their Mouth". I agree with Woodie - the CNC programming boys needed to look busy. They came up with a "high tech" solution on a low tech material. If they were cutting braces out of plywood it would make more sense and might be useful on the Formica (HPL) series.
As to the "sustainability" thing, I'm all for it - the less rosewood they use, the more might be available to me!
Seriously though, I do appreciate the conserving of resources where possible, and think wonderful instruments can be made with non-traditional materials. I do find the idea that mixing and matching back wood panels to create a particular sound a bit hard to swallow, and have to wonder how much the new CEO (a "metalhead" who spent most of his career as a consultant) understands wood and wood construction.
Martin has always built a few "Duds" on the periphery and been willing to try new things while still keeping the core of traditional acoustic guitars as their main business, and hopefully this will continue to be the case.

Thanks Colin it's been very difficult she and I were very close and today is six weeks since she passed.

I'm 67, been married and divorced a few times, lost close, personal friends before including having one die in my arms but losing my dear ole Mom has been the toughest thing in my entire life to work through for me. I helped to take care of her the last 15 years and when you spend that much time trying to keep someone around and they die you somehow feel responsible or at least I did the first several weeks. An awful feeling with not only great grief and loss but some blame too. And then there is the survivor's guilt.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Hesh knows I'm in the same boat. Dad died just before Christmas, and I'm still a wreck. I lived with him for 15 years, and I keep hearing his voice and doing things just like he did... It's rough.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Hesh and Chris,
Sorry to hear of your loss.
I have heard it said that there was only one perfect son. I'm sure your parents took comfort in having a devoted child to look after them in their old age.

Hesh and Chris to you both sorry to hear of your loss.

I'm at the stage of life now where for example last night in the middle of my band practice I see on my phone that my father called and my thoughts immediately go to, what happened to mom? I know I will get that call some day and I dread it.

Wake up every morning and smile because one day it will be gone.

Hesh and Chris, please take care and be good to yourselves.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Deepest condolences both to Hesh and Chris for their losses.
As you feel your loss of loved ones, also be mindful to feel the joy you shared with them- those fond and loving memories will always be with you. Visit your departed loved ones often through those memories.
May they rest in peace.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

You guys know a lot more than I do, but Ive listened to examples of this model being demonstrated and Im not hearing anything revolutionary, not even enough of a difference in tone to warrant all that extra effort tbh.
I know everyone has different ears, but Im not hearing it.
But to ea their own.

Im extremely sorry for your loss Hesh. I lost my Mom a few years back, and it still stings.

Thanks Charlie and very sorry to hear about your Mom. Mom's are special, very special.

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Ann Arbor Guitars