Description

Question. What do instrument makers, guitar technicians, tone hounds and Martin experts all have in common? Answer, a deep respect for the mahogany bodied Martin D-18 – especially the pre-truss rod version like this one.

Why so much respect for such a lowly instrument you ask? Its mahogany, not fancy rosewood, has no ornamental binding or clever inlay you observe.

And that is precisely the point. The D-18 is the workhorse of the Martin range; what you have is a guitar designed and built for tone, clarity, volume and even more tone. No effort is put into adornment, no money wasted on the frivolous. It’s been built by carefully selected craftspeople using highly skilled tonewoods in the American factory of the greatest acoustic guitar company in the world.

So this is the benchmark for acoustic dreadnoughts. If yours doesn’t sound as good as this, then you’ve got the wrong guitar. And yours probably doesn’t sound anything like as good as this one.

It’s 35 years old, so its really just starting to ‘open-up’. The wood has settled down and all the sap cells have now fully transmuted into tone-producing crystalline cells. You only have to speak in a low voice for this soundboard to start vibrating.

Then there’s the mahogany body. Many of the fore mentioned folk actually prefer mahogany to rosewood. Why? They think it sounds better of course. When you play it, you feel the tone is rather warmer than it is with a rosewood body, and that’s a good feeling.

It’s such a shame you can’t just pick up this guitar from the web site and play it. You wouldn’t want to put it down. Mind you, it wants to be played – it’s a Martin and they just get better and better the more you play them.

And another thing

Vintage Martins are increasing in value at the rate of 10-15% per year.
D-18s like this one represent the value for money end of the vintage market. You actually get a lot of guitar and bucket loads of tone for your money. Spend 10 times this amount on a 63 and you wont get 10 times the tone.

Features

• Spruce top
• Mahogany back and sides
• Neck/body joins at 14th fret
• No truss rod, no neck volute (more desirable)
• Plush hard case (not Martin but very high quality)
• Setup by Graham Noden of Denmark St for us with D'Addario 11s
• Warranted for 12 months
• What more do you need?

Keywords

Martin D18, Martin D-18, Vintage guitar, classic guitar, dreadnought, acoustic guitar