From the January/February 2021 concern of Acoustic Guitar | By George Gruhn

Q: Having seen the 1930 Martin 000-45 Deluxe in the September/October 2020 concern, I’m interested by just a few issues: Why and when did Martin swap to a stable headstock, and was Martin the first to make use of this design? What was the take care of the banjo tuners on the earliest OMs, and had been another makers utilizing them? —Melody M., through e-mail

A: It’s typically stated that early Martin guitars with 12-fret necks usually have slotted pegheads much like classical guitars, whereas these with 14-fret necks solely have stable pegheads. However this doesn’t, in actual fact, correspond to the actuality of Martin historical past.

Christian Frederick Martin, Sr. and his household had been from Markneukirchen, a city in what’s now jap Germany, close to the border of the Czech Republic. Previous to emigrating to the United States in 1833, Martin had labored for a few decade in Vienna, Austria, in the workshop of Johann Georg Stauffer, which produced high-quality devices that had been wanted by skilled musicians. As is typical of the guitars of that point, most had a neck becoming a member of the physique at the 12th fret. 

Lots of the Stauffers featured pegheads with six tuners on a aspect—remarkably comparable in form to Fender’s electric-guitar design of 150 years later. Solid pegheads with friction pegs had been normal for many guitar designs from the Renaissance via 1800, earlier than the introduction of geared tuners. The expertise for producing geared tuners was very totally different from the expertise of a luthier. A set of Stauffer-designed gears—which had been additionally used on a few of the earliest Martins made in the United States—might price greater than a mid-priced guitar with friction pegs.

From Martin’s founding in 1833, the firm supplied Stauffer-style designs, with friction pegs on a stable headstock, or geared tuners on both a slotted headstock (three tuners per aspect, like on a classical guitar) or the six-on-a-side configuration.  

As early as 1824, Spanish virtuoso guitarist Trinidad Huerta carried out in New York, and by 1840 gamers equivalent to Philip Benedid and Madame de Goñi traveled from Spain to New York and different East Coast cities, the place they had been very properly acquired. New York Metropolis trainer and guitar seller John B. Coupa was one among Martin’s greatest clients and strongly urged the firm to undertake Spanish designs. Martin’s well-known squared-off peghead form and peghead volute weren’t distinctive, nor was Martin the first to make the most of this design. The Spanish devices that had been influential at the moment—primarily made in and round the metropolis of Cádiz by luthiers equivalent to Antonio de Lorca, Jose Recio, and Joséf Pagés—utilized nearly similar shapes, which had been prominently featured by the Spanish gamers touring the United States.  

It may be stated that Martin imitated the peghead and physique shapes, headstock volute, and three-ring soundhole rosette of those luthiers. However Martin refined their designs, incorporating a Germanic diamond-shaped peghead graft and creating guitars with extremely subtle workmanship, sleek designs, and X-bracing patterns as early as 1843. Their sound and playability supplied a brand new stage of sophistication, prompting de Goñi to make use of and endorse Martin guitars slightly than the Spanish originals. [Martin briefly supplied a duplicate of a guitar de Goñi performed—the Measurement 1 De Goni Genuine 1843—the earliest mannequin of its dimension, in addition to the first to make use of X-bracing. —Ed.]

The designs launched and refined by C.F. Martin, Sr. throughout the 1840s and ’50s remained remarkably unchanged via the mid-1920s. Martin’s authentic clients had been primarily classical and parlor music gamers who used intestine strings. It was not till the 1920s, when Hawaiian songs grew to become in style, that Martin started providing devices particularly designed for the metal strings required of this music. The transition could have been additional prompted by the reality that in the 1920s, Andrés Segovia toured the United States and launched a brand new type of classical-guitar taking part in, made potential by Spanish Torres-style devices, which he claimed made the earlier gut-string kinds of Cadiz and Martin devices to be out of date. Martin wanted to adapt to a altering market. 

Throughout the late 1920s, Martin barely elevated the thickness of its tops to resist the rigidity of metal strings. In late 1929, Martin launched the OM-28 Orchestra Mannequin, the firm’s first six-string guitar with a 14-fret neck. The OM prototype featured a slotted peghead, shortly modified to an old-style stable peghead with geared banjo pegs. Though Martin can rightfully declare that the OM-28 was the first flattop steel-string guitar to characteristic a 14-fret neck, it ought to be famous that the Gibson L-5 archtop guitar, which debuted in 1923, featured a 14-fret neck, whereas Gibson’s Type zero artist mannequin guitar, with its fancy mandolin-style physique scroll, integrated a 15-fret neck and a stable peghead as early as 1908. It must also be famous that Gibson guitars featured stable pegheads way back to founder Orville Gibson’s work in the 1890s. 

Most of those devices utilized tuners mounted three on a plate, much like the sort used on guitars with slotted headstocks, however the L-5, in addition to some Gibson flattops, briefly featured the possibility of banjo pegs beginning in 1929. The banjo pegs featured a a lot decrease gear ratio than guitar gamers most well-liked and had been ill-suited to the rigidity of guitar strings, so each Martin and Gibson quickly discontinued using banjo pegs on steel-string guitars, though the former continued to make use of them on OM fashions via mid-1931. The Grover firm launched particular person guitar gears designed for steel-string guitars with stable pegheads in 1930. These gears quickly grew to become the business normal.

George Gruhn is the founding father of Gruhn Guitars in Nashville.