Martin Guitar to Introduce Reimagined Standard Series Guitars at 2018 Winter NAMM
NAZARETH, Pa. (Winter NAMM, HALL D Booth 5602) – January 11, 2018 – C.F. Martin & Co.® (Martin Guitar) will introduce their reimagined Standard Series guitars at Winter NAMM in Anaheim, California. Collectively, this will be the most significant update to the company’s flagship line of guitars in its 185-year history.
The guitars in Martin’s reimagined Standard Series, from styles 28 to 45, have been the guitars of choice for famous players such as Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Kurt Cobain, Beck, Eric Clapton, and countless others. They’ve been woven into the very fabric of our history for generations and across all genres of pop culture, and continue to inspire musicians worldwide.
“I challenged my coworkers to help me with the significant task of modernizing guitars whose origins go back to the 1930s (and earlier),” said Chris Martin. “As you might imagine, the discussions were quite animated. Fortunately, we all knew we were working toward a common goal: How can we modernize traditional Martin Guitar models while continuing to honor our rich history and heritage? Well, together we met that challenge head-on, and the results far exceeded my expectations.
“Changing this many models that are so iconic to the company and music industry all at once was a real challenge,” says Fred Greene, Martin’s Senior Director of Product Management. “But our team did an incredible job in choosing appointments and improvements that make these instruments even better.”
The most notable updates to the line include the addition of a modern high performance neck that is thinner and more comfortable for the player, and vintage appointments, including aging toner and open-gear tuners. There have been changes to internal features as well that include scalloped and forward-shifted top bracing, depending on the style. The bottom line? When you put all of the changes together, the result is a Martin Standard Series line that looks, plays, and sounds better than ever before.
For further details on the entire reimagined Standard Series, please visit www.martinguitar.com/standard.
About Martin Guitars and Strings
C.F. Martin & Co.® has been inspiring musicians worldwide for 185 years with their superior guitar and string products. Martin guitars and strings remain the choice for musicians around the world for their unrivaled quality, craftsmanship, and tone. Martin guitars and strings can be seen and heard throughout the company’s long history, across all genres of music, and in all segments of pop culture from concert and theater stages to television and movies.
With an unwavering commitment to environmental sustainability and responsible manufacturing practices, Martin continually drives the acoustic guitar market forward, introducing innovative features that have become standards across the industry. These groundbreaking innovations include the introduction of X-bracing, the 14-fret guitar, and the “Dreadnought” size guitar. In strings, Martin has also led strings innovations, such as introducing the first high-tensile strength steel-string core wire, the first nickel acoustic strings (Martin Retro), and now their proprietary Titanium Core strings, which offer unmatched stability, tone, comfort, and longevity.
When I ask most of my friends who play Jazzmasters why they gravitate towards the design, I often hear about the importance of pedals. There’s something about the extra noises that come out of the soapbar pickups combined with the sonic contouring of the bass and treble circuit selector that helps accentuate the tones of all manner of guitar effect. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is a clear example of this usage, as is experimental icon, Nels Cline.
The human ear can hear sounds in the range from approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, but the upper limit of frequencies that the human brain can discriminate is at the very most around 4,000 Hz. Even if the compass were to be expanded by increasing the number of keys on the piano, the extra notes at the bass end would, to the human ear, sound like nothing more than a rumbling noise, and the added treble notes would be heard as an unpleasant dissonant noise with no sense of being in a tonal range, and thus, musically, would be almost meaningless.