MARTIN ARCHIVES
Fred Greene’ s original sketch on graph paper showing his intitial creative thoughts on the SC-13E
The document sits far outside the usual frame of a company history. It predates the founding of Martin by nearly 70 years. It predates the United States Constitution. Yet it rests today in a climate-controlled room in Nazareth, only a short walk from the factory floor where instruments continue to take shape by hand.
There is something grounding in that proximity. A single sheet of paper, preserved across centuries, tied to a lineage that still finds expression in wood, wire, and human touch. The distance between 1765 and the present moment feels compressed there.
As Martin’ s archivist and museum manager since 2018, Ahner is the custodian of what amounts to one of the most complete institutional records in American manufacturing history: hundreds of thousands of documents covering the Martin family’ s origins in Germany, CF Martin Sr.’ s canceled checks from the 1850s, artist correspondence spanning two centuries, production records that can tell you when a specific guitar was started and when it was completed, sales ledgers from the early 20 th century that show which dealer received which instrument and on what date. The archive goes forward, too. In a drawer somewhere, Ahner has the graph paper sketch that Fred Greene drew when he was first
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imagining the SC-13E, and the foam body mockups that Tim Teel cut on his shop bot while working out what the body shape might become.
“ Just the amount of information that the company has,” Ahner says, and pauses to let the thought resolve...“ A guitar company that’ s almost 200 years old, what was retained. It just blew my mind when I was able to first get into the archives and do research with Dick.” Dick is Dick Boak, the writer, artist, builder, and artist-relations figure who served as Martin’ s institutional memory for decades before Ahner took over his role.
Martin archivist and museum manager Jason Ahner.
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