PROJECT 91
Right. The risk is that someday the guitar stops being popular. But I’ m actually betting on that never happening. I think the guitar is here to stay.
You know, I like art. I served on the board of the Allentown Art Museum. They have an extensive collection that Samuel Kress gifted to them. He also donated major works to the National Gallery in Washington. And that art is beautiful. It hangs on the wall. But you can’ t play it. With a guitar, it can hang on the wall and look great, but you can also pick it up and play it.
Or think about putting $ 50,000 in the bank at 3 %. Someday you can say,“ Well, I earned this much interest.” But your money just sat there. You couldn’ t do anything with it. A guitar has utility in addition to its value. That’ s the difference. Maybe it’ s more like buying a vintage sports car. You can actually drive the damn thing!
By the way, Carter’ s currently has a very nice prewar D-45 listed for $ 475,000. At the end of the day, it’ s your choice.
Well, that begins to make $ 150,000 look like a bargain! But why $ 150,000, specifically? The materials may establish a hard floor, and the craftsmanship is unquestionably extraordinary— yet wood and labor alone don’ t account for that number. If this were purely about tone and construction, the price would settle much lower. So, what, exactly, explains the rest? For starters, it’ s paying for the research we’ ve done. This is a big project. We started finding Brazilian rosewood with paperwork— which honestly shocked me. My colleagues would say,“ Hey Chris, there’ s this stash for sale.” And I’ d say,“ Does it have paperwork?”“ It looks like it does.”“ Okay, let’ s buy it.” So, as we were buying these small amounts— a little bit here, a little bit there— I said to myself, we need to do something important with this wood.
I talked to Tim Teel about this project, and I said,“ Tim, let’ s make a reproduction of every pre-war D-45 we ever made.” Honestly, I bet Tim would say that conversation happened three years ago. It’ s taken us that long to get to the point where we can confidently say we’ re now building the guitars we’ ve spent two and a half years researching.
And then there’ s the question: what is a 45-quality set of Brazilian rosewood worth, knowing we may never get new Brazilian rosewood out of Brazil again? Ever. Maybe when my daughter is my age— she’ s 21 now— maybe when she’ s 70. But maybe not. If they aren’ t planting and stewarding those trees, this could all just be old wood.
I mean, it is odd. Here you have this precious raw material, and it only seems to go up in value— especially when it’ s prepared to be made into a Martin guitar. A block of Brazilian rosewood that isn’ t suitable for building guitars? Maybe it’ s not that valuable. But once it’ s large enough to yield a back and sides, it becomes unbelievably valuable. To us, anyway. And to our fans. There’ s also something about it. If you take half of a Brazilian rosewood back, hold it by your fingertips at the top, and tap it in the center, it has a bell-like ring that very few other woods have. Whoever first decided Brazilian rosewood worked for guitars made that decision before my great-great-great-grandfather got into the business. So, it’ s had a pretty good track record as a tonewood.
So, I assume only a few Project 91 guitars have been built so far?
84 | SPRING 2026