MARTIN ARCHIVES
about a decade had pivoted to steel strings as the new standard. The 14-fret dreadnought followed in the 1930s, and the company’ s own internal correspondence from that period shows how uncertain they were about it.“ They were apprehensive,” Ahner explains.“ They weren’ t sure where it was going. They took the chance anyway, and the model took off so decisively that the dreadnought eventually became the defining shape of the American flat-top guitar.”
That original dreadnought body form from 1916, the
I0034H physical template itself, is in the archives, alongside the forms that came before it and the ones that followed.
What Ahner keeps returning to is the pattern that runs through all of it. The company pays close attention to what players want, takes a risk based on that attention, sees what holds up, and keeps building from there. The sequence repeats across Martin’ s history with enough regularity that it reflects a way of working that has
From left to right: Martin 2-24( 1888 – 89), 1-21( 1870), Size 1 De Goni( 1843), 0-28, 000-45( 1911), and Ditson 111( 1929). Together these instruments illustrate the evolution of Martin guitars as changing musical styles and performance venues drove demand for larger bodies, greater volume, and a fuller tonal range.
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