Description
Exc- condition • SN#331840
1-11/16″ Nut • 2-1/8″ Pins
Waverly Tuners
This 1973 Martin D-18 is a well-known guitar in our area. This guitar was owned and played by a local bluegrass couple for years. I will mention that the playability and tone of this guitar is quite good.
There are a few repairs but no problems. This guitar has a good snappy attack with full tonal depth – not sluggish or “thud-y” at all.
The neck has a Rosewood peghead overlay with the usual CFMartin decal logo at top. Back of peghead has newer Waverly pre-war style open-back tuners(made in Bozeman, Montana. Beautiful bone nut. Unbound Rosewood fingerboard with graduated pearl dot inlays. Fingerboard shows where some first position fingerboard wear was filled with Rosewood dust and glue. The frets show minor wear in first position. Neck has been reset some years ago and is at the proper angle for good action. There is some professional touch-up on both sides of neck heel, where the sides of the heel meet the body. Some chipping occurred, was repaired and touched-up.
The neck is Mahogany with a great feeling modified Vee profile. Rosewood heel cap. Strap button installed on neck heel.
The body is bound with single black binding around the back edge and Black outer binding with white/blk/wh/blk accent purflings inside the main binding. Original Rosewood bridge with bone saddle is in fine serviceable condition but outer bridge wing shows a dent in treble side that corresponds with continued dent into the Spruce top. This is not a big problem – more like a temporary distraction… The original bridge is too good to replace and the dings to the top are not important… you’ll quickly get over it! Pickguard has been reglued.
The Spruce top could possibly be Red Spruce, based on phenotype clues of grain orientation and grain variance… and because of very well-articulated sound power. The top and back edge of body are bound with black outer bindings, with the back having a single black ply and the top having multiple purfling accent lines against the Spruce edge. There is one repaired side crack on treble side at waist area. The back has one very small, repaired crack in upper shoulder of bass side. Mahogany back shows thin black stringer along the back mid-line.
We get lots of used Martins through our store… This is probably the best 1970’s D-18 in the last 5 or 8 years.
Comes with original wooden hard case.
