MARTIN BOOK THE A COMPLETE HISTORY OF MARTIN GUITARS Walter Carter LIBRO CHITARRA

THE MARTIN BOOK. 160 pagine. Walter Carter

A COMPLETE HISTORY OF MARTIN GUITARS,

UPDATED EDITION WITH NEW PICTURES AND REVISED TEXT

MARTIN & CO. ET 1833

Series: Book

Publisher: Backbeat Books

Medium: Softcover

Author: Walter Carter

The Martin Book

For over 170 years the C.F. Martin company has produced some of the finest flat-top acoustic guitars in the world. Martin's designs for the shape and construction of these instruments have influenced virtually every other manufacturer, and the flat-top guitar as we know it today is essentially the same as that established by Martin in the 1850s. At one time or another Martin's guitars have driven the sound of every kind of popular music, from country to pop, from bluegrass to rock 'n' roll, and with the current resurgence of acoustic music, Martin's premier guitars are once more finding a new generation of enthusiastic musicians. The Martin Book is a fresh view of this extraordinary guitar maker, pulling together many strands of musical and manufacturing lore into a fascinating whole that illuminates Martin's long and varied history. Dozens of specially commissioned full-color photographs show every kind of Martin model, some of which come from Martin's own unique collection. Meticulous listings for collectors and enthusiasts simplify the identification of Martin instruments and detail virtually every guitar that the company has produced since the early 1830s.

Inventory #HL 00331417

ISBN: 9780879308872

UPC: 884088064082

Publisher Code: 0879308877

Width: 8.5"

Length: 11.0"

160 pages

For over 170 years the C.F. Martin company has produced some of the finest flat-top acoustic guitars in the world. Martin's designs for the shape and construction of these instruments have influenced virtually every other manufacturer, and the flat-top guitar as we know it today is essentially the same as that established by Martin in the 1850s. At one time or another Martin's guitars have driven the sound of every kind of popular music, from country to pop, from bluegrass to rock 'n' roll, and with the current resurgence of acoustic music, Martin's premier guitars are once more finding a new generation of enthusiastic musicians. The Martin Book is a fresh view of this extraordinary guitar maker, pulling together many strands of musical and manufacturing lore into a fascinating whole that illuminates Martin's long and varied history. Dozens of specially commissioned full-color photographs show every kind of Martin model, some of which come from Martin's own unique collection. Meticulous listings for collectors and enthusiasts simplify the identification of Martin instruments and detail virtually every guitar that the company has produced since the early 1830s. 160 pages

Martin is the oldest and most respected name among American instrument makers - not just guitar makers but makers of all instruments. The guitar world, Martin had been established for over 50 years when Orville Gibson started carving the tops and backs of mandolins in the 1890s, over 100 years when Leo Fender started putting pickups on solid guitar bodies in the 1940s. Martin carried on steadily as such important names as Washburn, Epiphone, Gretsch, National, Vega, Kay, and Harmony arose, flourished, and perished. Unlike most of the great names in the guitar world, Martin never became a big company. From a one-man shop, it grew into a small-town factory; even at its all-time height of production in the 1960s, Martin turned out less than 20 percent of the guitars that Gibson was producing at the time. Martin's quality fell off with the increased production of the late 1960s and 1970s, but the company learned its lesson well in the lean years of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1990s, with respect and demand for Martins once again exceeding production capabilities, the company planned only a small, cautious expansion, refusing to sacrifice quality for quantity. At the summer 1993 National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) trade show, dealers were told that Martin was back-ordered for one year. They still ordered Martins - a testament to the quality signified by the Martin name. Martin's longevity is not hard to explain. CF. Martin, who founded the company in 1833, transformed the European guitar into a new, uniquely American instrument. The flat-top guitar we know today is larger, and it has steel rather than gut strings, but otherwise it is not much different from the instruments Martin was making by 1850. All the company had to do was to keep on making guitars the same way that CF. did. Martin was enticed at times into unfamiliar markets by the surging popularity of mandolins, banjos, and electric guitars - but flat-top guitars remain the backbone of the company's fortunes. Unlike Gibson's mandolins and acoustic archtop guitars, unlike Fender's electric solidbody guitars, Martin's guitars did not effect any revolutionary changes in popular music. CF. Martin's X-braced flat-tops of 1850 were well accepted but they did not start everyone playing guitar (everyone was playing banjo at that time). Martin instruments played an important role in the guitar'S rise to prominence in the 1930s, but the innovations that sparked the movement should for the most part be credited to other makers. Martin guitars certainly epitomized the folk boom of the 1960s, but the guitars themselves had been developed decades earl ier. Rather than leading any musical movements, Martin guitars have provided a foundation for popular music - a consistent, solid base that has always been there, regardless of what style of music was the current rage. Consistency goes a long way in explaining Martin's success, but there is more. You don't have to walk into the factory to see that Martin is a different kind of company. From the outside it looks more like an elementary school from the 1960s than an industrial facility - an image underscored by its location in a residential area. Perhaps the key is a sense of humanness that comes from family. In 1833 the company was founded by a man named CF. Martin; in the twenty-first century the chairman is still a man named CF. Martin. In the context of family ownership, there is today no company quite like Martin. Neither Orville Gibson nor Leo ...