Golden Years: The Era When Martin Guitar Laid the Foundation for the Modern Steel-String Flattop Acoustic
LiLooking back at the late Twenties and Thirties from a present-day perspective, it might seem that C.F. Martin & Co. was woefully behind the times. During this period, guitar manufacturers were obsessed with building and inventing louder instruments, from the resonator guitars developed by National and Dobro and the refinements in archtop design by D'Angelico, Stromberg, Gibson, and Epiphone to the early electric models introduced by Rickenbacker, National, Dobro, Gibson, Epiphone, Vega, and many others.
Although Martin resisted the general quest for more volume until 1931, when the company introduced its line of dreadnought models, during those years it experienced its own exceptionally fertile period of innovation that summoned in the modern era of the flattop acoustic guitar. The models that Martin introduced or refined during this period remain the standard for acoustic guitar design more than eight decades later, and the instruments the company made in this brief time frame have become some of the most valuable, desirable, and collectible guitars ever produced.
Guitar collectors and historians generally refer to the pre–World War II period as Martin's Golden Era. "For most people it's that period from the late Twenties right up until World War II," says Chris Martin IV, chairman and CEO of C.F. Martin & Co. "That's when our larger steel-string flattops—the dreadnought and the 000—really came into their own. The construction of our guitars changed during World War II for various reasons, and after World War II, Martin's business recovered slowly. We didn't look back and recognize how much musicians and retailers valued our pre-war steel-string guitars until the Seventies."
Read more» |
