PROJECT 91
Project 91
Inside Martin’ s Most Ambitious Pre-War Revival with Tim Teel
When C. F. Martin & Co. announced Project 91, it was more than a limited run— it was the culmination of decades of restraint, archival scholarship, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Director of Instrument Design Tim Teel walks us through how a cache of documented Brazilian rosewood, painstaking historical research, and Martin’ s deep institutional memory converged to make possible something long considered unattainable: a serial-number-specific homage to the 91 pre-war D-45s built between 1933 and 1942— instruments widely regarded as the pinnacle of the American steel-string guitar.
Tim, as Director of Instrument Design at Martin, how did your role and experience shape the realization of Project 91? The best way to answer that is to go back to an earlier project that shaped our thinking. We bought the first OM-45, a 1930, at auction. And then we recreated that guitar as an Authentic, as a limited edition, because, at the time, we knew there were 11 made. More recently, we learned that there were 13 of them made. So, that was a full recreation in terms of using Brazilian rosewood and, trying to be as true as possible, to what that guitar is: banjo tuners on that guitar, that kind of thing. So, we’ ve always wanted to do that sort of thing with the D-45s, but we were never able to do it because we never had enough Brazilian rosewood.
That’ s interesting— you’ d think Martin would have access. What made it so hard to secure the material? Brazilian rosewood is an extremely finite resource, so we’ ve always had to allocate it very carefully. We were saving some of the stock for very special projects, like the 2 millionth guitar, that kind of thing. But there were 91 of these D-45s that were made from 1933 until 1942. We never had enough D-sized Brazilian to support a series of that scale and some of the other projects we had going on. And, you know, you couldn’ t buy, Brazilian rosewood after 1986. Remember, Martin started getting out of the Brazilian rosewood game early back in the’ 60s. Go back to the D-35.
90 | SPRING 2026