Yow.

It’s a “player” guitar for sure … not a “collector,” but all the playing miles that this guitar has seen in the past 82 years show up in spades to render that classic big, bold, vintage-Martin sound in style. It’s also recently had an expert set-up by the guys at Wood Street Guitar Repair in Oakland. There is fretwear, of course, but this beast is hugely comfortable to play, and intonates great, with zero buzzing. If you want mid-War Martin rosewood dreadnought sound without spending six figures, you could hardly do better than this guitar.

For whatever combination of original and restored features, the tone is big. Really big. Brazilian rosewood sides and back, of course, and a gorgeous set. And the top … 1943 is known for exceptional-sounding guitars, because of an exceptional spruce log used for tops, and this dread is one of those. Mystery Spruce, some call it, because it’s unclear what species it actually was. Looks-wise — and with variation within species — perhaps Euro or Engelmann, but it could be their standard Adirondack. Scalloped braces.

Restoration features:

• non-original tuners; early/mid 50’s-era Kluson waffle-backs, likely installed to replace the thin-geared, flat-plate tuner that was used due to wartime metal restrictions in 1943 and early 1944.

• replaced bridge & bridge plate. Bridge plated looks to be laminated with several very thin layers of spruce and ebony

• refinished, and a long time ago … has acquired lots of lovely age patina in the intervening decades. And just because a guitar has been refinished doesn’t necessarily diminish the quality of the instrument; think of Tony Rice’s famous D-28, which was refinned several times. Who’s to say those jobs didn’t actually improve the tone? Hard to say.

• nicely splinted crack on the upper bout, a small hairline crack at the bass side of the fingerboard extension and a small crack below the pickguard

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  Here’s a VIDEO DEMO.