|
All these years the world has been waiting for the Guild Guitar Company to come out with a reissue of their legendary (and nearly impossible to find – there are more sasquatches roaming the mountains than there are Guild Super Jumbo 12-strings) F-612 mammoth, megalithic monster of a double-sixer – the guitar that the very sight of brings hirsute, sinewy steel drivers and locomotive coal shovelers to their collective knees. (“Why is he talking about a Guild guitar, I thought this was about a Martin?”). If I asked the people at Guild once, I asked them 40 times – but did they do anything about it? Um, no. The reason I mention it is because C F Martin Guitar Company has done something totally unexpected and unconventional – they have invented a new Martin guitar shape! This guitar’s body, improbable but true, measures 17” wide and 21” long, 4 ¾” deep at the bottom side. It stands a total of 42 ½” in length not including the tailpin, and if that isn’t huge enough to scare small children, I don’t know what is. Okay, so it’s not as big as the only guitar you can pray to, the Guild F-612, which was 18” wide – so big was the Guild it could completely obscure two and one half Munchkins hiding behind it, leaving a guitar showing that could seemingly play itself! But this Martin is sufficiently massive and masterful. For something so mighty -- sounding, as it does, like the rolling of thunder over the highest peaks of Mt. Belzoni (near Baton Rouge, right? Not Mississippi.), it plays infinitely easily.
The back and sides of this tympanic, octave enhanced, tone gorilla are East Indian rosewood, divided by a comely backstripe of red, black, white, crème marquetry. The top is bordered in 6-plies of black-white Boltaron®, the back in four-ply, the sides and headstock in two-ply. Said ‘stock is East Indian overlain and inlaid with the C Martin F vertical abalone totem, while tuners are gold-plated Martin-logo sealed backs with gold plated mini-buttons. The Sitka spruce top is admirably parallel and closely grained and the soundhole is bordered in a ring of abalone. The internal bracing is “progressively scalloped tone bars” and we can advise you that folks will stand back when you address your plectrum. The scale length is 25.4”, the width at the nut is 1 13/16th” the width at the 12th and the string spacing at the saddle are both 2 5/16th”. It has fourteen frets to the body; its beveled edge Delmar® tortoise color pickguard is teardrop shaped. The fingerboard and body bindings are grained ivoroid; the body is finished in polished gloss and the top is burnished with light aging toner. The carved bridge is belly style and the saddle radius is 16” and well compensated.
Inside its wondrous chamber is found the D-TAR Wave-Length Multi-Source pickup system with its soundhole position microphone and two hidden rotary controls for volume and tone. Its neck shape is “modified low oval,” its nut and saddle are bone, and there is (to everyone’s great relief) a carved diamond behind the nut. The ebony fingerboard is inlaid with 7 pearl diamonds in five well chosen frets and there are 7 black dotmarkers on the bass side of the ‘board. With gold-plated headstock hardware and abalone gleaming this guitar will set you beaming; with all that spruce and rosewood teeming you may think that you are dreaming. This new remarkable model, we predict, will become the most popular new 12-string guitar we sell. Just watch!
|
