View Single Post
  #14  
Old 10-17-2012, 07:21 PM
brothers brothers is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Wind Gap, Pennsylvania
Posts: 19
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by royd View Post
it certainly looks to be gorgeous work and the sound in the videos seems to be very, very nice... my question is why? Was the original guitar damaged so that it required such major surgery? If not, I have difficulty feeling good about this... of course, the guitar wasn't mine so my opinion isn't worth anything, but to destroy the '66, which is not a bad guitar by any stretch of the imagination, simply to obtain the sides and back seems a bit much to me.
Yeah, the top was in very rough shape (cracked, pickguard missing) and the neck was gone. By "gone" I mean it was not on the body! Generally, conversions are done to guitars that are in similar condition.

There's quite a difference in tone, resonance, feel, etc... when the 50's and 60's Martin Brazilians are converted to Adirondack..., forward-shifted..., etc... (sanding the back and sides thinner contributes to that) Also, as mentioned earlier, to get a new Martin with Brazilian is big $$$ and this provides an opportunity to get a beautiful looking and sounding instrument for much less cost than new.

I worked at Martin for 15 years and my business partner, Dave Strunk, worked in the Repair Department at Martin for 20 years - I can assure you that we do not haphazardly approach conversions. There are definitely "candidates" for conversions. It's sort of like breast augmentation - some are nice enough to leave alone!

- Rich

Last edited by brothers; 10-17-2012 at 08:15 PM.
Reply With Quote