1946 Martin 0-18 natural

In 1946 Phil walked the 19 miles from East Bend NC to Winston Salem, NC to buy this fabulous Martin acoustic. According to his son, it never had a case. It was played, a lot, and when we got it a lot of love was needed. Neck set and bridge reset, normal Martin kind of stuff, but the bridge plate had pulled loose and bowed, and would not straighten out so a new bridge plate was needed. The frets were worn out, and some divots on the fingerboard, so had the neck straightened and refretted and all that fixed. One of the original Klusons was stripped, and another replaced- with the hundreds of odd machine heads we have accumulated in the 35+ years we have been here you would think we would have some, but no, so we ordered and installed some new Kluson repros- the footprint was perfect and they work so much better. There were 2 symmetrical cracks from behind the bridge to the butt of the guitar, those were fixed, and any loose braces fixed. I have used this luthier for almost 30 years, and spared no expense to make this guitar as perfect as possible, new compensated saddle, and I believe the nut is new. The guitar plays great, and sounds amazing. It has pretty much ground to a halt when we got it, now it's ready for the next 75 years.
There was some dried wood glue on the top, where a sad attempt to reglue the bridge was made, we tackled it with some McGuires and got most of it off. We found a nice hard case, but is a hair bigger than the guitar- we have a soft case, but this is a 75 year old Martin and it has earned a hard case. Rode hard and put up wet, and I have a picture of a newspaper ad from 1950 advertising Phil's gig, one of many with this instrument- I spent 49 years playing music (the last 35 while running a guitar store) and it does wear you out, but to me instruments that have survived deserve the best they can get, and that is what we have tried to do with this beauty. Thanks for reading all this! I love a story, and the history behind an instrument.