Martin guitars are hand made by skilled craftspeople, many still using the design and techniques introduced by the company's founder in the 1830s. The privately held manufacturer is acknowledged as the creator of some of the world's finest musical instruments. Although Martin guitars are about the most imitated guitars in the world,there is one characteristic of Martin guitars that the rest of the guitar industry has either been too slow to pick up or not implement; the fact that Martin guitars are numbered sequentially. Because Martin guitars are built right in the back yard of Nazareth PA(where their headquarters is), it is definitely a great thing to have an acoustic guitar icon in your living room.In fact, at least 80% of guitar artistes own a Martin or have owned one before!
Qualities of Martin Guitars:
Martin guitars are light, aesthetically pleasing instruments. They possess ease of play, with lyric al qualities, and also possess clear, balanced and precise tones. They are also very rich in color that projects well. Martin guitars are often the first choice for acoustics, whereas Gibson and Fender guitars are often preferred for electrics.
Value for Money
Martin guitars are the best guitars for the money out there today especially the D-18GE which is the best buy for a high end mahogany dreadnought. Another, like the Martin D-18 Authentic 1937 goes way beyond the D-18GE in detail to create an exact reproduction of a prewar D-18. Martin guitars are wonderful, but for some reason, they have elected to use really cheap looking pickguards. Many Martin owners replace them, and that's what I have done as well. Martin guitars are always a good investment and they are highly recommended!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
An introduction to Martin Guitars
What are guitar strings, and how gauges are used to measure them?
In its essence, the guitar string is wrapped around the arm of the tuning mechanism and it sticks out about a 16th of an inch out the end. Also, the guitar string is fixed at the bridge and neck of the guitar and hence each guitar string must have a node at these positions. Attaching guitar strings at the bridge or at the neck will place a restraint or boundary condition on the guitar string's movement. If you've played with the Slinky toy before, you will notice that the guitar string works just like it.
Also, the measure of guitar strings go by their gauge size. Gauges vary from really light 8s up to heavy 12s. Your choice of strings will depend on the type of music you play and what you feel comfortable with. Gauge classifications differ among manufacturers for electric guitar strings, but are generally divided into extra super light, super light, light, medium, medium heavy, heavy and super heavy. Once you find strings that suit you, note the dimensions of each string on the packaging. Usually, they are either heavy, medium or light. There’s no need to go through this procedure when ordering string sets in the family of Stick 4ths/reversed 5ths tunings, including Baritone Melody, Deep Baritone Melody (down a whole step), Matched Reciprocal, Deep Matched Reciprocal (down a whole step), and the Grand Stick equivalents for these.
