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| C.F. Martin & Company Celebrate 175 Years of Making Music |
By Susan Logue
Nazareth, Penn.
18 August 2008
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One hundred and seventy five years ago, Christian Frederick Martin came
from Germany to the United States and started making guitars in a small
workshop. Six generations later, the company has grown, and the guitars
it makes may end up in the hands of some of the most talented musicians
and songwriters today. VOA's Susan Logue has the story.
 | | Brad Marshall (L) and Kevin Artz (r) have been playing Martin guitars together for 30 years as Marshall Artz |
Brad Marshall will never forget the first
time he played a Martin guitar. "It felt like it was a whole band when
I strummed it. It was so full sounding."
Kevin Artz says the
first Martin he heard put every guitar he had ever played to shame.
"It was like the guitars I had been playing were like a honky tonk
piano, and this guy picked up something and put it before me that was
like a Steinway. It was so beautiful."
have
been performing together for 30 years. Between them they own nine
Martin guitars. In fact Martin guitars are the only guitars they play.
Blues-rock legend Eric Clapton loves Martin guitars so much
he'd like to come back in his next life as one. It is the guitar he
chose when he "unplugged" for MTV.
 | | Dick Boak has worked with musicians like Eric Clapton and Sting to custom design Martin guitars for their needs |
And when Sting wanted a
special sound for his "Sacred Love" album, he commissioned Martin to
design the instrument. "Sting wanted a little guitar that could be
strung an octave above pitch in order to get a shimmering treble
response," says Dick Boak, the man Sting came to with that request.
As
director of artist relations at , Boak has
worked with some of the best known guitarists on the planet, from Paul Simon to John Mayer.
"In many cases we know exactly
where a guitar is going," Boak says. "Not only do we know [that], but
we'll see [the guitar] on television a few nights after we have strung
and tuned it with [the artist] playing the guitar on stage, and it is a
tremendous thrill."
Musicians Who Have Played Martins - Eric Clapton
- Paul McCartney
- John Lennon
- George Harrison
- Paul Simon
- David Crosby
- Graham Nash
- Stephen Stills
- Buddy Guy
- Elvis Presley
- Hank Williams
- Woody Guthrie
- Johnny Cash
- Gene Autry
- John Mayer
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No matter how they look on the outside, they all share something in common, Boak says: the Martin sound.
"Our
historian Mike Longworth used to have a nice way to describe the Martin
phenomenon," Boak says, "and that's that 'we start with the Martin
sound and build a box around it.'"
The Martin phenomenon
began in 1833, when Christian Frederick Martin, Senior came to the
United States from Germany with his family and set up a shop in New
York. Six years later they moved to Pennsylvania.
"They were
unhappy in New York," Boak says. "They moved to Nazareth, because it
reminded them of their hometown of Markneukirchen, Germany. And in
Nazareth, he really found his style of guitar-making, and the guitars
that C.F. Martin built really came to define the instrument."
![[insert caption here]](/english/images/putting-neck-on-guitar.jpg "[insert caption here]") | Attaching the neck to the body is one of about 300 steps in the process of building a Martin guitar
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Six
generations later, they still define guitar standards. Today, nearly
500 employees work in the factory in Nazareth. Most of the guitars
they make are handcrafted in a process that involves about 300 steps.
This
year, in honor of the company's 175th anniversary, a limited number are
being crafted just as they were in 1937, using rare woods and animal
hide glue.
"Going back to the old glues, old process and
old woods, just produces something very, very special," Boak says,
adding some have compared the quality of those pre-World War II Martin
guitars to that of a Stradivarius Violin.
But, as Kevin Artz
notes, even Martin Guitars crafted with more modern methods are valued
by musicians as something special. "If you're an acoustic player,
Martin Guitars tend to be your dream."
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