1967 Martin D-28 (Vintage)

Some instruments define a category. The Martin D-28 is one of them. When anyone anywhere talks about dreadnought tone, this is the guitar they mean, and they have been for the best part of a century. It's the yardstick everything else gets measured against.

This one is from 1967, and on an acoustic that means something quite different than it does on a solidbody. With an electric you can argue about vintage substance; with an acoustic you can't. A solid Sitka spruce top that's been moving for nearly sixty years simply sounds different from a new one. The cell structure of the wood changes, resins crystallise, and the timber becomes stiffer and lighter at the same time. What comes out is a tone that's more open, more complex and quicker to respond than any new instrument, however well built.

The classic D-28 recipe does the rest: Sitka spruce for the top, solid rosewood for back and sides. Rosewood gives you the deep, carrying bass and the glass-clear highs with their characteristic overtone structure, while the spruce top provides the cut and an almost inexhaustible dynamic range. This guitar can whisper, and it can fill a room.

Which is exactly why the D-28 has been the tool of choice in bluegrass, folk and songwriting for decades, and anywhere an acoustic has to carry on its own. It's loud enough to hold its ground against a banjo and a fiddle, and balanced enough to work as the only thing behind a voice.

And then there's the character only a played instrument develops. The finish has hardened over the decades, the wood has settled, and the guitar carries the marks of everyone who played it before us.

A genuine vintage gem from Ede's Private Stock.