play my regular “join the body at the 14 th fret very natural and at the same time it allows you
acoustic again?” to draw some interesting lines on the back
The fretboard feels like a shorter scale but is of the guitar… and it feels very organic. We
actually a long scale and your arm never feels wanted a guitar that was all about ergonomics
like it has far to go to get to wherever you want to play. We wanted it to play easy. We wanted
to go – even past places you have never been. your hand to just move in a natural way up and
The Koa fine veneer on the back and sides is down the guitar. It really had to be a ground-up
drop dead gorgeous. The craftsmanship is all design. From the very beginning it was going to
Martin. be a cutaway guitar. So, it had to feel soft and
the action had to be low… because what is the
The pick-up system is the Fishman ® MX-T
point of a cutaway if the action is high?”
Electronics and it sounded big through the
PA system. The guitar was expressive plus Well said Fred! Next thought I had was how do
with all of these higher register frets available you keep the fretboard so stable all the way up
now, think of what you can do by adding effect to the 20 th fret?
pedals? Oh my, my old Telecaster has an
Fred continued, “Regarding the fretboard, on a
acoustic sibling now!
regular Martin guitar the fingerboard runs past
TWO BIG QUESTIONS FOR THE DESIGNERS…
the neck and the fingerboard actually rest on
top of the guitar body. In this particular case,
While at the NAMM Convention I set up a the neck runs the length of the fingerboard and
meeting with Fred Greene (Martin’s Chief helps support it like a Telecaster. You are able
Product Manager) to ask two burning questions to go ahead and make a good straight neck
about this breakthrough acoustic instrument. and just leave it and not have to worry about a
lot of adjustments.”
First up was how did they overcome the
traditional way of doing things and Makes sense. If you do need an adjustment on
make this new neck joint system the neck you can simply do micro-tilt tweaks
and heelless design so you can – another smart aspect Martin employed here.
access the entire fretboard in
the first place? Fred states, “We With this new heelless linear dove tail design,
started playing around with the idea it also offers you the potential future option
of a floating dove tail inside there and of buying different necks to pop on and off.
then cutting away that front block. Really? Say you want a wider nut or a beefier
But once you cut away the backside to your neck. You would be able to
front block it started causing
swap the neck in three minutes!
all kinds of issues. You
have nowhere to glue the The leadership team at Martin working on this
sides on the guitar. Then project had several different types of players in
we had the idea, ‘what mind when building this open-ended instrument.
if we just exposed the I can see the whole gamut of everyone from
front block and make shredders, to old blues players, from smaller
that an integral part of stature men or women to players of all shapes
the outside of the guitar?’ and sizes that want to do new music on an
We solved two problems. instrument that offers new fretboard frontiers.
You can actually get your For several types of musicians - this literally is a
hand down there and it feels
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February 2020
game changer.
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