I had the privilege of hearing Ed Golden, retiring manager of the Martin Custom Shop after 20 years with Martin, play and speak about a selection of Custom Shop guitars he had designed from a size 5 up to a Dreadnaught this evening at the Music Emporium. It was part of a broader presentation about the history of the family-run Martin Guitar Company founded in New York City in 1833 and currently run by the fifth generation of Martins.
Martin guitars enjoy a devoted following because of the quality of the construction and their consistent Martin "tone." Some of the most prized Martin guitars are 70 years old and up. What the Custom Shop has been able to do in more recent years (they have now grown to 14 artisans in the Custom Shop) is respond to a strong demand for meeting individualized design requests while maintaining signature Martin elements from their traditional lineup. Available "aux choix" now are all of Martin's current and past body sizes, neck lengths and profiles, nut and bridge widths and designs, and appointment styles such as "18," "28," "35," "45," and even "100."
Acoustic Picker on a custom Martin OM-42
Every prospective Martin guitar owner now has the ability to design their ideal instrument based on their playing style and subjective preferences. While custom upgrades that can include exotic woods and specially-designed inlays will be pricey, a Custom Shop Martin guitar that simply includes standard elements that are not currently available in the combination you desire need not be prohibitively more than a regular production model. Keep in mind, though, that you will have to wait about eight months for your own signature guitar to be made due to the high demand!
Lowden guitars are handcrafted in Ireland. With current MSRPs starting around $4500 and reaching into the five figures for models made out of reclaimed Brazilian Rosewood, these boutique guitars are for the professional or avid connoisseur of fine guitars. One of my guitar heros Pierre Bensusan plays his own signature model Lowden guitar.
English guitarist Jon Gomm bought his used 1990 Lowden O12C acoustic guitar "Wilma"in 2000. He has since put thousands of shows and miles on it while touring the world. His original playing style integrates percussion and rythmic scratching (inspired by his early experience with Flamenco guitar) giving his instrument the visible wear and tear of a touring musician's life. The guitar is admittedly beat up, but boy does it still respond on stage. Here is Jon's hit "Passionflower" that went viral last year after several well-known personalities tweeted this YouTube clip (currently at 4.5M views).
Jon plays the piece above with his Lowden tuned to Eb G Bb F G Bb. He's installed banjo tuning pegs for the bottom two strings so he can tune these strings up a whole step and back during the piece. Those are hand-made Newtone strings, which can be ordered with a larger diameter core that will tune down without losing the tension of a standard tuning string. The guitar's electronics are a Fishman Rare Earth humbucker and microphone system and a Fishman Acoustic Matrix transducer. Each pickup goes through one of Jon's three Boss PQ3B parametric EQ pedals and he uses a Tech 21 Blonde overdrive pedal, a Boss OC3 octave pedal, and Line 6's Echo Park delay and Verbzilla reverb pedals for effects.
Once you've experienced the music that Jon and his Lowden O12C guitar make together, you will have some insight into the intimate relationship between performer and instrument that Jon shares with his beloved Wilma! Enjoy.
Brad Carter is an actor and former musician suffering from Parkinson's disease a progressive neurological disorder. In an effort to reverse the hand tremors that had cut his musical career short, doctors at UCLA Medical Center successfully implanted a brain pacemaker during an awake brain surgery last week. While this in itself is not unusual, doctors live tweeted the operation, including Brad testing his fine motor skills by playing his guitar during placement of the electrode in his head.
The unique resonator guitar Brad is playing above is handmade by Kurt Schoen in Washington State. Schoen electric and resonator guitars are all one-of-a-kind built to order custom guitars. The Schoen cigar box style resonator guitar Brad owns is known as the Turbo Diddly. Kurt builds his guitars out of centuries-old reclaimed wood such as from antique dynamite or liquor boxes. His guitars are prized by well-known aficionados such as Bon Jovi and Led Zeppelin. Owners of the Turbo Diddly model similar to the one played by Brad Carter include Billy Gibbons, lead guitarist for ZZ Top.
Here's wishing Brad Carter a successful recovery and many more years of guitar picking on his wonderful Schoen Turbo Diddly!
Canadian commander of the International Space Station (ISS) Chris Hadfield just returned to earth two days ago accompanied by the release of his music video of David Bowie's iconic "Space Oddity" recorded in space. It stars the Commander, an accomplished musician, floating around the Space Station with the first guitar in space, an acoustic parlor-size guitar, the Larivée P-01. The video also features superb footage of the Space Station and Earth from space. It's garnered 11.5 million views in three days. Don't miss this!
NASA psychologists sent the guitar up to the Space Station to help with the mental health of its astronauts. A high-quality parlor-size guitar was required as space is at a premium on the Space Station and it costs upward of $45,000 per kg to ship stuff up there. Two identical Larivée P-01 guitars were thus purchased from a local Guitar Center in Houston so comparisons between the instruments, one on earth and one in space, could be made. The Larrivée parlor guitar Commander Hadfield played has actually been on the International Space Station for over a decade now and has completed close to 60,000 orbits around earth!
The Larivée P-01 is a 24" scale length guitar with 12 frets to the body and a 13.25" lower bout and 7.75" waist. The depth is 4.5" with a 1 & 3/4" nut. This all-solid wood guitar features a select Spruce top, Mahogany back, sides, and neck, and Ebony fretboard and bridge.
The P-01 model has been out of production for over a decade according to John Larrivée, Jr., but he announced today that he is taking orders for a limited edition "ISS Commemorative Parlor" that is a P-01 replica. It will be interesting to see whether all the buzz around this space recording will revive interest in parlor-size guitars the way Eric Clapton was able to revive interest in 000-size models after his MTV Unplugged success.
In case you guys out there needed any further encouragement to play the guitar, two recent studies confirm what we all already knew - that playing the guitar is attractive to the ladies. In fact, it turns out just holding a guitar in your Facebook avatar will almost triple the probability that a random woman will accept your friend request according to an Israeli study published in Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science. In a French study published in Psychology of Music, just carrying a guitar case when approaching a random woman more than tripled the probability that she would give out her phone number. (Hat tip to Fender guitars).
No study yet on swooning percentages when the guy can actually play the guitar (and sing!), but to illustrate the point, here is young guitar phenom Noah rocking his original acoustic arrangement of LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It!" Enjoy. Seventeen million others already have!
Mark Knopfler and his band Dire Straights burst onto my musical consciousness with his hit Sultans of Swing off their debut 1978 Dire Straights album. If you want to hear how an electric guitar can be made to sing, check out Mark's virtuoso live performance of the classic hit below.
What may be less known is that Mark is also considered a fantastic acoustic guitar player. In fact, Martin has issued two signature limited edition Mark Knopfler acoustic guitars!
The Martin HD-40MK is a dreadnaught-sized guitar with solid Italian Alpine Spruce top and solid East Indian Rosewood back and sides. Only 251 of these numbered and signed guitars were made in the summer of 2001 with a current Blue Book value in excellent condition of $2,250-2,750. A whimsical feature of the guitar is the etched reproduction on the inside heelblock above the model number of a dinosaur Masiakasaurus Knopfleri, named after Knopfler by the paleontologists who were listening to Dire Straights when they discovered this previously unknown species in Madagascar.
The Martin 000-40S Mark Knofler "Ragpicker's Dream" signature model was similarly a limited-edition run of only 155 guitars in the summer of 2006. This Grand Concert 12-fret 000-style guitar has the same combination of woods, but features a slotted headstock and a pyramid style bridge evocative of Martin's pre-war parlor-size guitars. Blue Book value on this guitar is at $3,250-3,750.
Among Knofler's personal collection of fine vintage instruments, his 1938 Gibson Advanced Jumbo has often been featured on his albums. Here he is demonstrating some basic picking techniques on the guitar, including his own distinctive take on clawhammer style. It's the next best thing to an in-person lesson from a guitar legend (with the bonus that you can study it over and over again). Brilliant!
And here's a more recent Knofler guitar-playing primer (2017), showing off so more of his vintage guitars.
With the rest of the country, I have been grieving the death and destruction we experienced here in Boston yesterday on what was otherwise a perfect Marathon Monday. The pictures and footage of the detonations and carnage do not convey the full horror of dozens of instantaneous amputations among a cheering crowd of onlookers, well-wishers, and friends and families of the runners.
Unable to focus on work and overwhelmed by the wall-to-wall news coverage, I felt relieved yesterday afternoon when I was able to beckon my son outside to throw a baseball in the street out front. Such a simple pleasure in life, one that sadly will no longer be possible for some local families. I hope those directly affected by the blasts have family and friends to support them through such tragedy.
Later in the evening, I forced myself to spend some time cleaning and re-stringing my latest guitar acquisition. In times of what can be paralyzing grief, focusing on manual tasks helps me to go on. A newly re-strung guitar must be played and frequently re-tuned while the strings initially stretch. So I played some and re-tuned, and played some more. So too, we must process this terrible attack on our community and adjust step-by-step and resume living, enjoying the small blessings of each day. I simply pray that we can protect our children and continue to make music as we move forward, as we must.
