PART II
Interview by Bob Goldman

Martin Guitars is a community. Once you buy one, it's like you are a friend or a long lost relative to anyone that works there or owns a Martin Guitar. Since I have bought my first Martin Guitar, I have become friends with many of the people that work there and others that play Martin Guitars. There is some sort of magic that they create with the wood, but it is also like going home for Mom's cooking.

BG: I just received a device from an inventor designed to help stop the top from arching and improve the sound of the guitar.
CM: We get a lot of solicitations and they usually end up in R&D. It takes a long time to work with these inventors, because generally they think they have invented the Holy Grail and that everyone that owns a guitar is going to want to buy one right away. We have to bring them down to earth. I haven't seen it, but it doesn't mean that somebody in R&D hasn't. The negotiation process can be quite tedious with inventions, particularly because they all have this vision that everybody who has a guitar is going to buy one. Have you ever seen pictures of the old guitars with the Tilton Mechanism? It's from around the turn of the century and it was a little metal plate mounted on a board and it went underneath the sound hole. My grandfather told me that Mr. Tilton approached his father. He was so convinced that someday all guitars would have this thing in them and have the Tilton Tone, that he had it patented. We made a couple and it didn't do anything.

BG: It's like the clock key that you had and now you are doing the Steinberger. Is it something like that?
CM: In that case it does work (Steinberger's neck adjustment). It's complicated to a manufacturer, so therefore it adds cost to the guitar. What we are not sure of is how many people are going to want to use it or know how to use it.

BG: The other thing is once you set it up, how many times are you going to change it? How many times do you adjust your guitar?
CM: Maybe if you travel a lot and it goes through a lot of changes you might, or if you are a tinkerer. The thing I know about my car is where to put the key and where to put the gas, that's about it.

BG: How do you deal with the deceased artists that you want to make signature models for?
CM: Through the family. The family usually has control of the estate. We had a challenging issue with the Jimmy Rodgers guitar because there were two warring factions who claimed the rights. Dick Boak can tell you more about that story, that drove him crazy. We were working with one side of the family and then the other side of the family came along and said, no, don't work with them, work with us and Dick said I have to work with one of you, I can't work with both of you;. But usually the wife or family member is very thankful that someone is willing to recognize them.

BG: As far as the factory goes, do you see yourself expanding, since you are always back ordered?
CM: The opportunity we have is on the alternative shifts because we have a huge investment in tooling, fixtures, and machinery and in other industries, the economic term is work your assets. We have these assets and if you are working one eight hour shift, we have two eight hour shifts where the stuff is idle. So right now we are on a shift and a half. We can go to two full shifts. You have to maintain the machines and things like that, but we still have room to expand the second shift.

BG: The 15 series guitars are now one of the biggest steals on the market. They are priced very low for the quality and sound.
CM: They always have been. When we introduced them they were half the price of the standard models. The standard models were $50, they were $25. They have always been a bargain.

BG: They're just not as loud, but they have a sound to them.
CM: They're not as profitable, but they have always been that way. I don't ever want us to be the company where people say, oh yeah, those are the guitars for the rich doctors and lawyers. That's not what we are about. We like to sell to the rich doctors and lawyers, but we also like to sell to the rest of the people. Here is a good story. When we came out with the D-1, we had some criticism, even internally. "Oh this isn't good, we should only make D-28s." I got a letter from a guy, he said, "Dear Mr. Martin, I just turned 39 and bought my first Martin." I thought he was going to say a D-28. He said, "And I just got to tell you, all my life I've wanted a good guitar and I thought when I became middle aged, I could afford one. Well guess what. I'm middle aged, I have a mortgage, I have two kids I have to send to college and I could afford the D-1, thank you so much for making it." It really made me realize it was a good move.

BG: Any good stories? I always hear people say you always have a good story about your family or the old days.
CM: Well there is the story that is in Mike's book, very true! In fact I think it is in the museum about my grandfather who was very frugal. He would walk around in the evening and pick sandpaper out of the waste paper basket and put it on the workmen's benches and come in and tell them that they need to fully utilize the sandpaper. He was so frugal that they used pencils for all of the marking back then. He had these copper tubes to stick this nub of a pencil in so they would use the pencil all the way to the end. So for Christmas, the foreman bought my grandfather a whole new box of #2 pencils and said, "Here Mr. Martin, you can retire the copper tubes." But you know that we have always been a frugal company, the difference today is the volume. We have a higher volume of products, but I like to think that if any of my ancestors came back, they would be proud of the product.

BG: Do you think CF Martin had any idea of what he did?
CM: I don't think any of them would realize how universally popular the Dreadnaught shape is. I think if they could come back and see, they would be surprised. I went to Thailand on vacation and I am sitting in the airport and there is this huge advertisement for something and they had a
person playing a Dreadnaught. It wasn't a Martin, but could you imagine one of my ancestors sitting in this airport saying, Wow, that's the guitar we invented back in the 1930's.

BG: Or the X bracing. From the 1850's it's still the best bracing.
CM: There are so many products today. If they don't change they go away and here is something that is still around.

BG: If they did change, it would go away.
CM: The hard thing today is that so many things for people have gotten so much simpler. When I was younger I had a 35mm camera. I had to read the book to learn how to use it. Today, you get a 35mm camera, you put the film in, you put the battery in and it does all the work. The guitar is as difficult to play today as it has ever been. So kids that are looking for the quick fix, the guitar isn't going to do it for them.

BG: Warren Haynes was saying that the guitar is the only instrument where you can play the same note so many different ways. Not like a piano where you hit the same note. On a guitar you can hit it on three or four different spots on the neck, you can change the attack or do whatever you want to change the note so it is never the same.
CM: And it is portable. You don't see a lot of people lugging their pianos around and even electric guitars can't be taken to the beach without a long extension cord! Take these to the beach.

BG: Les Paul was saying that is how he got into playing guitar. His mother said; You play the piano, your back is to the audience, you play the guitar, you stand out front facing everybody. Do a lot of artists come to the factory?
CM: No, I think when they're on tour their schedules are so tight and we are just far enough out of the way, that if you are in Philadelphia, it's an hour and a half and if you are in New York it's and hour and a half. Dick tries to get them here and usually he has to go see them in Philadelphia or New York.

BG: Have you always been interested in wood itself?
CM: Actually from the guitar standpoint I am interested in the design and the construction. I am not a very adept woodworker. I worked out in the shop for two years but I never became really proficient in anything. I am fascinated by the design aspects and the physics of it.

BG: Have you designed guitars yourself?
CM: I have the CEO models and that came about because I had these specific ideas. We would go into a meeting for new models. I would put my ideas out and then everyone else would say, well we can do this to it and we can do that to it and by the end of the discussion you can't recognize the guitar. Then finally I said, "Can I have my own guitar?" they said, fine. You can have the CEO model.

BG: I have noticed that whenever I have a question for customer service, I always get the answer right away.
CM: Customer service is something we have always prided ourselves on. They know that they don't want me coming in with a letter from a customer saying they weren't well served. The nice thing is that the information we have is readily available. The serial number list we have is consistent where as some of the other companies have lost records. Every time they were sold,
records were lost. One of the things we have talked about is that we want to maintain a switchboard operator so that when you call, you talk to a human being rather than to a recording which may or may not send you to a human. As expensive as it is, this is our first chance to say, hey we're a human company. We're not the big bad conglomerate. We're a bunch of people that care.

BG: Do you like the older guitars too?
CM: My favorite guitars are the pearl guitars. I don't care what age they are. The fancier they are, the more I love them just because I know how much work went in to them and how rare they are. Almost every guitar I buy has a lot of pearl in them. I didn't buy a D-50 last year because I bought a boat, but otherwise I have 45's that I can't even count. This year I am buying one of the OO-45S's. That's my guitar for this year.

www.martinguitar.com

Return to: