Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone else seen this?

http://nashvillepublicradio.org/blog/20 ... WPLN000001

Seems like a very unreliable way to test things. As well a a severe lack of info on the guitars themselves. This sort of uninformed publicity is not good for luthiers IMO.

no ... but its obviously the Taylor is track 2, really honky mids .. as for which martin is which, the '38 sounds like its buzzing alot to me, the new custom one sounds better, clearer - I actually had them wrong, but at least knew which ones were the Martins ... and not that George is the best player, I have heard him right in front of me playing various guitars, mine included, at the Montreal Guitar show .. in the right hands, the '38 might be a real gem .... its a 100K because you can't exactly go out and try a few and decide which one you really like !!!

Last year at the Woodstock show, I was lucky enough to check out about 15 pre war Martins at a friend of John Slobod's place.. the best sounding one to me was a '43 00, it was amazing - even better sounding to my ear than the 33 or 34 D18, which was supposedly the third one Martin ever made ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I actually got them all coorrect.
The first one had a fairly even tone spectrum, but sounded kinda quiet. New Martins sound like this. Overbraced, but good sounding.
The second one midrangey and crappy, obviously the Taylor.
The third one had a rumbly low end, and clear loud highs. A lightly braced sound, plus many years of breaking in. Obviously an old Martin.
I listened through my Bose noise-cancelling headphones.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I think you have to be in the same room listening to the guitars. After all they are acoustic instruments. Having said that some one like Martin Simpson could probably make any guitar sound wonderful.

I got the Taylor right but couldn't really tell which Martin was which.

However... It sounds like they have the same crappy strings on each guitar with the amount of high end string buzz... Or the strings are way too light for his playing. Sorry but it made all 3 guitars sound like crap.

It also wasn't a very good recording of any of them so that added to the crappy sound. I have made better recordings of my guitars and I still won't post anything on line because I have not been happy with the quality...

Bob

I picked all 3 but didn't think the 38 sounded better than than the custom just louder. The Baby is what it is. I preferred the sound of the $5000 custom.

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"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

The $5000 custom would be my pick!