GEAR REVIEW
C . F . MARTIN GPCE INCEPTION | Eric Dahl
• Top European Spruce
• Sides Maple wood
• Back three-piece Maple & Black Walnut
• Black Walnut neck & Fingerboard
• 20 Fret Grand Performance body shape
• Cutaway
• Skeletonized X bracing
• High Performance Neck Taper
• 1 ¾ ” Nut width
• 25.4 ” Scale length
• Maple arrow / Hex shape fingerboard inlays
• Satin finish
KEY FEATURES
• Amber fade sunburst
• LR Baggs Anthem electronics
• Gold open gear tuners
We were fortunate to acquire the highly secretive and much talked about new C . F . Martin GPCE Inception for review at [ WM ] Worship Musician magazine . Martin has pushed the boundaries of their comfort zone with this newest model which has top players in Nashville , TN wanting to get their hands on it for a test drive from the Martin Showcase Room here . The guitar is visually stunning with its Satin finish and Amber Fade Sunburst finish on top . Even the headstock and fretboard are captivating since they are made of Black Walnut . The wood used to create the new Inception is a combination of readily available tonewoods , sustainable woods and FSC certified European Spruce for the top .
When you look inside of the guitar , you ’ ll find Skeletonized X bracing that looks like fine lattice work throughout the interior . A total of 14 frets takes you up to the cutaway but you have a total of 20 frets to navigate on the Inception with a 25.4 ” scale length . The Black Walnut neck features Martin ’ s High-Performance Taper which fits nicely in your hand up and down the neck while playing . The fretboard is inlayed with forward styled Maple Arrows on either side of a hex pattern in the middle . The back of the Inception is a three-piece design combining Maple and Black Walnut .
The pickguard is paired perfectly with this model with a tortoise pattern . Open face gold Grover tuners keep things tuned up . For electronics Martin went with the LR Baggs Anthem system which is a favorite of many performing musicians . And it is easy to control with the interior mounted volume and tone controls . The 9-volt battery is accessed at the lower bout of the body next to the ¼ ” input jack , so much nicer than having the battery inside of the body . Acoustically the Inception sounds much different than what you expect from a Martin acoustic guitar . I found it to be less bassy and boomy with increased mid and high frequencies . But
46 January 2024 Subscribe for Free ...