MARTIN ARCHIVES
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Martin’ s collection of daguerreotypes includes, clockwise from upper left, concert guitarist Madame Delores de Goñi with her Martin Size 1 guitar, Martin’ s first signature model and the company’ s first guitar to feature X-bracing; Rev. John Wood; a woman poses in the 1860s with a“ Martin & Coupa” guitar, an early Martin instrument sold through John Coupa’ s New York dealership.
ical features, scattered production records, and whatever documentation survives from the period. Ahner works through those inquiries alongside the steady flow of guitar questions, the occasional visitor arriving with a vintage instrument in hand, and the longer projects that run in parallel with his daily work. One of those, Project 91( see Collectible Guitar Spring 2026), involved moving year by year through the archives to establish exactly which features a given model would have carried at any point in its production.
Part of what he is always building, alongside the
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