Martin 0-18 Steel String Guitar Natural, 1917 / *No Longer Available*

Here we’re looking at a Martin 0-18 dating to 1917 and built at the Martin plant in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. This fully functional and good sounding guitar is over a century old!

Over the years, this Martin 0-18 guitar has had an amount of service. Virtually all steel string guitars of a certain age will require a neck reset, and that was done on this guitar some time ago. It has been refretted. There are a couple of repaired cracks, one on the top and two on the back, both towards the tail block. There is a fairly thick Indian Rosewood sub-plate to support the ball ends of the strings. And some time ago, perhaps decades, it was refinished.

As an early ’18’ model, this guitar pairs an Adirondack Spruce top with Honduran Mahogany for the sides, back, body blocks linings and neck. The fingerboard, and rectangular bridge are Ebony, while the head plate is Brazilian Rosewood. The top is fan-braced.

For hardware, the strip-mounted tuners are original, perhaps made by Grover, with the crown gear above the worm gear; this changed a year or so later. the ivoroid buttons in good condition.

Strung with light-gauge strings and presently tuned down a half step, this guitar has a surprisingly full sound with well developed and represented bass response. The fingerboard is almost flat.

A modern hard-shell four-latch case is included.

Introduced in 1898, discontinued in 1996 and reissued in 2017, the Martin 0-18 is one of the oldest, longest produced guitar designs. It hasn’t changed much over the decades. In 1934 the most notable change occurred with the shift to the 14-fret neck, following the lead of the then-recently introduced OM or Orchestra Model. The next change was in 1935 to 1940 with the shift to Rosewood instead of Ebony for the fingerboard and bridge. At the time and ending in 1969, that meant Brazilian Rosewood. For top woods, until the early 1940’s Adirondack Spruce was the wood of choice, but wartime demands on that species caused a shift to Sitka Spruce. The Martin Guitar factory is located in the Appalachian mountains, with the Adirondacks not that far away, so Adirondack Spruce was often the most local material.