Martin 000 Size Quilted Maple Custom Guitar

Basically, this guitar, a custom order from C.F. Martin & Co. is an 000-28VS but with a quilted maple back and sides, and tortoise bindings & purfling etc. for contrast.

A "Blond & Tortoise" guitar.

Starting with the headstock....

Slotted (square slots), diamond on the back, with the old type C F Martin & Co stamp on the back... and a tortoise headplate with the old style Martin logo. Waverly Nickel Side Mount tuning machines w/ Butterbean Knobs.

Slotted headstock with tortoise headplate

The we move through a 1-13/16" bone nut down to the neck .... and fingerboard of solid black ebony, with a snowflake in the first fret, and then Diamond and Square short pattern fingerboard position inlays. The neck joins the body at the 12th fret, with Mahogany Blocks/Dovetail Neck Joint, and with a tortoise heel cap. Modified V neck section.

Now we get intersting... the body.

For a start it is an 000 size... but as it has a 12 fret neck, the body is "extended" by two frets at the top.

Why maple? Well, because it will have a different sound to the mahogany or rosewood guitars. Maple is normally associated with having a "hard" sound, but in this case I am looking at mellowing that hardness out a little. That is being done by using quilted maple, and an Engelmann spruce top.

C.F. Martin & Co. describe the quilted maple as follows:
QUILTED MAPLE - ACER MACROPHYLLUM

Quilted maple is of the Pacific northwestern “bigleaf” variety and is less dense than the European hard maple varieties. The tone is slightly darker and warmer.

And the spruce:
ENGELMANN SPRUCE - Picea EngelmannII

Prized for its similarity in color to European (German) white spruce as well as its extreme lightness in weight which seems to produce a slightly louder, more projective or “open” sound than Sitka spruce. Again, this choice is designed to "warm up" the sound of the maple. (Back in January I exchanged a few emails with Tim Teel at Martin regarding this choice against the maple).

It has been specified with a polished gloss finish and without any toner. This makes it very much a natural "Blond" guitar.

The back purfling (centre strip) is the tortoise style, and the binding is tortoise too. There's a tortoise heel plate to complete the picture.

The contrast of tortoise against maple is the effect that I was aiming for, and echoes the style used in the 1980's production Martin maple guitars.

Top braces are 000 12-Fret (000-28 GE) scalloped.

The top has the tortoise binding round the edges too... and also fine herringbone inlay. There is no pick guard... let's see the whole glory of the top.

There's a Custom Personalized- C F Matrin IV signature and “Rod Neep” label inside.

The bridge is a pyramid style in ebony, with a long saddle of bone, and a string spacing at the bridge of 2-5/16''. And set at a 24.9" (short) scale length.