1914 Martin 0-30

1914 Martin 0-30. A super-rare and gorgeous vintage Martin featuring a solid red Spruce top and Brazilian Rosewood back and sides! This guitar is absolutely stunning with an Abalone rosette and ornate purfling accentuating the edges. Sounds fantastic with a classic, soft tone and harmonic richness that could only come from a well-aged instrument. In great overall condition with some scratching, light dings, and expected finish wear for a guitar that is over a century old! Rare, beautiful, and a joy to play. Includes hardshell case.

Check out the feature from our luthier Tyler in the ECG Newsletter:

"The progression of guitar design, like most vocations, has been largely evolutionary rather than revolutionary. However, the transition from gut to steel strings in Martin's lineup through the late 1920s represents a landmark divide in the instrument as we know it. The steel string era is responsible for the two heavy hitters that dominate the market to this day: the OM and the Dreadnought, both introduced within a few years of steel becoming the norm. The common appointment styles like 18, 28, 42, and 45 are still the standard to this day. The gut string era, though, can seem quite foreign to the casual observer. The unfamiliar body sizes, styles, materials, and construction techniques are so distinct from the steel-string Martins we're accustomed to, you could be forgiven for failing to identify one as a Martin at all.

The style 30 had a relatively short run from 1898-1921, but it spent its tenure near the top of the Martin line. Only 356 instruments were ever made in the 30 style, 162 of those being 0-30s. While our steel-string sensibilities may lead us to look down upon the smaller dimensions of the 0, the reality is that the model's size is perfect for the lower tension of gut strings. The now-iconic 000 was very nearly discontinued before the advent of steel strings because of its substandard tone. Early gut-string versions of the Dreadnought were so bad that Martin refused to build them under their own name for almost 20 years. As strange as it sounds, the 0 is arguably the largest effective gut-string guitar out there, and this is a tremendous example. The quality of the old-growth red spruce top (some folks call this Adirondack) is untouchable by anything available today, commercially or otherwise. The Spanish cedar neck is lighter and more reactive than a modern mahogany equivalent. The straight-grain Brazilian rosewood used for the back and sides absolutely puts to shame the all-too-common stump wood sets that flood the modern market. Don't get spooked because this isn't a 000, it is likely the best fingerstyle guitar you'll find in our shop, or any shop for that matter."