Martin Guitar Factory Tour

Last week I was privileged to be invited to visit the Martin Guitar Factory in Pennsylvania… I’ve been to the USA several times & have been lucky enough to see to quite a few factories over the years but the Martin Factory was something else… a real historical experience. THIS is was where it all started!

Martin is not just an old name in guitars, it is THE name in acoustic guitars. The story of Christian Frederick Martin’s arrival in New York after emigrating with his family from Germany in 1833, is quite inspirational. CF Martin is the original designer & maker of the Dreadnought shape of guitar that is such a standard today (and I didn’t realise until this visit that he borrowed the name dreadnought from a battle ship… for its big “bottom end”). 

The factory is an interesting mix of high tech alongside very traditional and I can hardly imagine what it must have been like back in 1833 trying to make guitars in a climate where you are under snow in winter and extremely hot in summer compared to today when all the timbers and even the finished guitars are carefully stored in delicately controlled temperature and humidity environments. It is really impressive. 

The logistics of having enough timber stacked, stored & sawn to produce over 200 guitars a day in the Nazareth facility is incredible… couple that with another 300 a day out of their Mexican factory  and it is mind boggling.

The museum was a highlight as was being shown how they still hand shape the necks and hand shave the braces on the very top end Custom Shop guitars.  Yes, there is still a lot of CNC machining and even a fully robotic buffing booth but the “hand made” element was still very evident everywhere.

Thank you to the good folks at Martin for the opportunity. I can’t say that over 30 hours of flying time each way was pleasure but boy it was worth it.