1946 MARTIN D-18 - Lightweight, Resonant Mahogany Dreadnought - VG

Description: This is a wonderful guitar! It has the warm, deep & resonant tone and note articulation of a 77-year old Martin mahogany flat-top. I bought this 1946 D-18 from Richard Johnston at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto 30 years ago. The overall condition, playability, and sound captured my heart. The sound is everything you would expect from a Martin mahogany dreadnought that is over three quarters of a century old. The tone is deep and resonant, with robust bass and a ringing warmth through the mids and trebles. With an arpeggio, the notes are balanced and sustained. With chords, the notes blend like a good, complex wine. This guitar has commanding volume and punch; it sounds great flat-picked, strummed, or fingerstyle. Compared to my newer D-18's and my mahogany D-93 (a killer), it has more depth and authority. Martin built 675 D-18 guitars in 1946. The serial number pegs this one as very early in 1946, likely January. (Longworth stated in his book that S/N 94032, which was 260 guitars after mine, was 'born' in February). It has a Sitka spruce top with vibrant silking cross-grain and a little bear claw figure near the bridge and in a couple of places near the outside of the lower bout. The top has aged to a mellow amber over the decades. You can feel the ridges in the grain and the subtle crazing in the nitrocellulose lacquer with your fingertips, a testament to the light lacquer finish on the top. It has Honduran mahogany back & sides; a thick, beefy, rounded V-shaped mahogany neck. There is a a Brazilian rosewood overlay on the head stock and an ebony fret board - this one has a nice stripe running through it. I believe this was the last year for ebony fret boards on D-18's; they changed to rosewood sometime in 1947. The fret board has the customary dot inlays. The bridge is also ebony with a bone saddle, and the bridge plate is maple. Bridge pins are ebony wood replacements. The neck is 1-11/16" at the nut. The pickguard is tortoiseshell celluloid and the body bindings are b/w/b/w/tortoise around the top and tortoise around the back. The sound hole purfling is a band of 9 alternating rings of b/w, spaced between inner and outer rings of simple black. Here are the repairs that Gryphon made prior to my acquiring it, as well as condition notes: It has a splinted top repair to fix a crack on the bass side.It has a pieced section of mahogany on the bottom of the body, near the endpin (rectangular patch about 1-7/8" x 3-1/4") and a tiny triangular patch on the upper bass bout side. It has several expertly cleated hairline cracks on the sides (cleats visible inside the body).There is a small compression ding on the back of the neck, near 7th fret (this happened years ago and is the only incident during the 30 years of my guardianship).There are a lot of light scratches and rub marks on the back and a few on the lower bout of the top; faint overspray.There are arc-shaped scratches on the bass side of the head stock (from winder?).The original tuners were long ago replaced with nickel Grover Sta-Tites (before my time).The ebony bridge was replaced when the top was repaired - this does not have the bridge-through saddle that would have come with it from the factory. The action seems perfect to me for flat-picking. It measures 3/32" on the bass side at the 12th fret and 1/16" on the treble side. There is plenty of height on the bridge and the saddle for adjustment over years to come. This guitar comes with a Martin deluxe "coffin" molded hard shell case with the twist latches, circa 1980's. The case is in excellent structural shape and the interior is also excellent; the outside has some scuff marks from storage and transport. This guitar will be expertly and carefully packed and shipped insured. I have sold and shipped over 50 high end and vintage guitars from my personal collection over the past few years without a single incident. The utmost care will be taken with this precious instrument. Flat rate of $250.00 for shipping insured in the continental US. Communication about payment is expected within 24 hours. Paypal, ebay, credit card or cashier's check will be accepted. Unless I am away on business, I generally ship same day or next day after payment. However, if you are paying by check, shipping will be delayed until the check clears. No shipping outside the continental USA for this instrument at this time. Normally I accept returns under certain circumstances, with the purchaser paying for the return shipping. However, the standard ebay 30-day return policy will not work with this kind of vintage instrument and I do not want to subject this guitar to the risks of back-and-forth shipping -- that is why my policy states "No Returns." If there is a major issue, we need to discuss it within 2 days of your receipt of this guitar. If you have a poor rating, contact me about payment plans before buying this guitar.

Price: 13545 USD

Location: Oak Ridge, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-02-25T20:42:15.000Z

Shipping Cost: 250 USD