What do YOU hear when listening to these two Martin guitars?
A friend is thinking of buying a guitar and we were sitting around playing a couple Martin guitars, when I thought it might prove helpful to get some blind taste test opinions when comparing these two guitars.
Captured with a Zoom H1, hand held recorder, this was an impromptu recording and not meant to be polished performances or even in tune guitars. But it does a pretty good job of capturing the personalities of each guitar.
No compression or special effects, the file was just dumped into Reaper and cut up and rendered in its present state.
There are two different guitarists, each plays Guitar #1 followed by Guitar #2.
Feel free to comment here or on related threads at the Unofficial Martin Guitar forum and the Acoustic Guitar Forum.
Each guitar has its own personality even within the same model or very similar models, as anyone knows who has sat in a guitar shop and played two or three different D-28s side by side.
Give these a listen and see how you feel they differ, or not, and what you like about one or the other or not etc.
And if you were going to buy one of them, which one might you choose?
The Taylor Road Show was off to its first week of 2015 dates, with a stop at Matt Umanov’s guitar shop in New York City’s famous Greenwich Village.
One Man’s Guitar dropped in to see what was new and interesting in the world of Taylor Guitars.
Taylor Guitars’ Nate Shivers, L, with Wayne Johnson, R, and Matt Umanov, C
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The MC for this road show was Nate Shivers, Taylor’s District Sales Manager for the northeast region. And joining him was Grammy winner Wayne Johnson, in his tenth year as a Taylor Product Specialist. Together they put together the kind of enjoyable and educational evening that I happily recommend to anyone remotely interested in the music made on acoustic guitars.
After some welcoming remarks by the affable Mr. Shivers, Wayne Johnson launched into a demonstration of his “go to guitar,” a 13-year-old Taylor 74NS, the precursor of today’s 714CE-N. He explained how this particular Taylor model was nylon string guitar ideal for steel string players who didn’t want to have to tackle the 2 inch neck on a classical guitar, and that it was designed with amplified performance in mind. He then proceeded to play some impressive upbeat Latin-tinged Jazz, through a Fender amp, aided by an array of effects pedals, including a looping box that allowed him to lay down bass and chord progressions before soloing over top of them.
As he switched seamlessly from fingerstyle to flatpicking, and from ingrained composition to off the cuff improvisation, it was immediately apparent why Wayne Johnson has spent decades as a studio and touring guitarist for acts like Manhattan Transfer and Rickie Lee Jones. But he displayed a different sort of professionalism in the role of product demonstrator, as the rest of his performance was less about displaying his mad skills and more about showing off the potential and personality of the various Taylor guitars put through their paces over the next 75 minutes. All other guitars had steel strings, and with one exception they were all heard acoustically, with the aid of a Rode M5 microphone.
Nate Shivers was likewise entertaining in his own respect, with a winning demeanor, wry sense of humor, and the easy going enthusiasm of someone who loves his job and has sincere appreciation for the guitars he markets, and a respect for the company who makes them, from their farsighted commitment to wood management and ecology, to their innovations in modern luthiery and a product line that has evolved through what Taylor has learned from practical experience and the feedback from their customer base among amateur and professional musicians.
Smooth Operators
Door Prizes Giveaway
They certainly have the road show concept down to a smooth and entertaining operation. Shivers first took the audience through the current array of instrument sizes, and Johnson played basically the same progression of chords and melody examples on each. From the Grand Concert, with its short-scale neck and relatively small top area and body depth, on up to the prodigious Grand Orchestra that has replaced the Taylor Jumbo design, each size was heard in an example of the 800 Series, made with Indian rosewood back and sides and a Sitka spruce top.
The second part of the presentation focused on the tone woods employed across the various series, including mahogany, maple, rosewood, ovangkol and koa. Each was heard via Taylor’s Grand Auditorium body size, which has become one of the most popular guitar designs in modern times, inspiring other brands to produce similarly progressive shapes and sizes in much the same the way the Martin dreadnought and the Gibson jumbo designs did in the twentieth century. The GA was said to provide a Swiss army knife kind of versatility, and Wayne Johnson took advantage of this to stretch out and play various pieces he felt worked well with certain wood combinations.
When it came to top wood, most of the guitars had Sitka spruce from the Pacific Northwest, but the example made from Hawaiian koa wood had a koa top. There were some other guitars available for playing before and after the presentation made from other wood like Engelmann spruce.
A high end Presentation Series guitar made from Cocobolo was used to demonstrate the latest generation of on-board amplification systems, the Expression System 2. This patented pickup consists of three small piezo crystals that sit behind the saddle, rather than under it. They are held in place by three screws set into the bridge. Instead of some 60 pounds of pressure squashing the crystals, as on traditional undersaddle pickups, the ES-2 only brings a few pounds of pressure to bear, resulting in a less-strident piezo sound when plugged-in, and a pickup that is sensitive to nuanced changes in finger pressure, string tension, and any percussive or damping techniques a guitarist might use on the instrument’s body.
A major highlight for me was getting to know the newly reworked 600 Series, designed to make the most of American maple, a sustainable native hardwood. Like the new 800 Series that underwent a similar refresh last year, the 600 series also gets Taylor’s new thinner finish and animal protein glues. But it also gets a torrefied Stika spruce top, and unique bracing designed expressly to wring out as much warmth, resonance, and complexity as possible. And over all that maple is a hand-rubbed dark Brown Sugar stain, meant to evoke the look of classical violins.
I thought they did a great job with these new 600s. They definitely have more going on in terms of presence and color down inside the voice, while there is also a hint of old dry box sound to them that is likely due to the torrefied spruce, which provides some “vintage tone.”
At the end of the presentation, Wayne Johnson took us through a special maple version of the T5 hybrid, a true acoustic-electric guitar that offers five-way switching of three pickup sources. When combined with adjustments in tone controls, effects pedals, etc. offered an astonishing spectrum of guitar sounds. From Tele to ES-35 to Santa PRS, to a perfectly pleasant and more than acceptable acoustic guitar tone, and all of it weighing much closer to a typical acoustic guitar than most any electric guitar. I was totally sold on the T5 and am seriously considering test driving one for possible purchase sometime soon – even if I cannot fit it into the budget for a few months yet.
In the words of Nate Shivers, there is nothing like bringing a bunch of really cool guitars and putting them into people’s hands and letting them decide for themselves. And for those of us in attendance on this particular evening, we had the opportunity to play the same guitars that Wayne Johnson had just used in such impressive ways, as well as some ultra-cool instruments from the Taylor Custom Shop.
And it was a very nice touch that Matt Umanov provided cheese plates, crackers and cold cuts, as well as beer, wine and soft drinks, which I heard does not normally happen at such Taylor Road Show presentations. So any dealers reading this may want to make note of it.
I cannot recommend taking the time to attend one of these evenings. And if you are fortunately enough to have one passing through your neck of the woods, don’t forget your wallet. The guitars brought for display, and at least in this case the other Taylors available at the dealership, were all offered for sale at abnormally low prices!
Learn more about the upcoming Taylor Road Show schedule HERE
And stay tuned for One Man Guitar’s first Taylor review, coming soon!
A refreshed Taylor 814ce offers many reasons why it’s among the world’s most popular acoustic guitars
Impressive to first time players and hardcore Taylor Guitar fans alike
Evenness across the strings and up the neck, nicely balanced between power and sensitivity, the 814ce provides the commanding fundamentals with the high end sparkle and sculpted low end definition, enhanced by the extra warmth and complexity that people look for in a Taylor made from rosewood. There was that exemplary Taylor sound, where strings picked across melodies or fingerstyle patterns retained their identity, with nice separation and precision, no matter how hard or soft they were played. There too were the classic Taylor chords, each fusing the notes together into one colorful entity.
But there was a whole lot more going on when it came to the sonic detail and dynamics in this particular guitar.
“This model didn’t get a makeover, it got seriously buff…”
Below is the greater part of a rather interesting message I had received out of the blue, and my reply, both of which have been redacted.
“… People are largely clueless about TSP and assume too much about his connection to Martin. He may prompt some people to post dumb things like [Name Redacted] did, and others to believe they’re doing the world a favor by promoting him. But they don’t know him. He’s a fake and his playing is remedial at best. It’s garbage guitar stuff, but since most members can’t play too well, they think it’s good. It is kindergarten nothingness. Just Mel Bay Fake Book -1. The other forum dealers have had enough of him promoting MM. One is planning to hire Craig Thatcher or Richard Starkey to demonstrate their stock and post it on the forum. The others will follow. It will expose Phillips’ for what he is.”
Mr. Phillips’ Reply:
There is nothing new about people casting aspersions about me and my writing, or suggesting there is some secret arrangement between Martin and me – often put forward by people whose personal tastes bias them against Martin in a manner similar to my own bias for Martin.
Just as there is nothing new regarding you taking the time and trouble to share privileged information about the terrible things being said about someone by individuals named or anonymous. Not that you are ever capable of such things yourself, of course.
My Relationship to Various Dealers
I make it plain [in the About section] on my website that I consider Mandolin Brothers my local Martin dealer and that I have been responsible for many sales for them [and other NYC dealers like Rudy Pensa, and Sam Ash, and Guitar Center, etc.] and I lay out in detail my relationship with Maury and Lori Rutch [of Maury’s Music,] which goes back to before they were in the guitar selling business, even though I have not actually been directly responsible for sales that I know of, except any that might have happened because of the videos I do for them. And I go into detail about some of the many guitars that were sold by Jon Garon [of My Favorite Guitar] because of my direct advice and recommendations. I also include a long list of links to other dealers who I have heard good things about, even though I have never had dealings with them.
But I did enjoy the notion of someone suggesting my motives and opinions could be countered by hiring some professional guitarist or other who has been paid by Martin for many years, presumably to offer a more trustworthy and less bias opinion than the person who has never worked for Martin.
In Re: My Guitar Playing
I would be the first to hope my playing could qualify as remedial, since the point of the videos is to provide a level playing field for people to compare various guitars. And I am the first to say that my playing is nowhere near the quality of many other guitar demonstrators.
I actually received a rather funny backhanded compliment from some reader who sent me an email just yesterday. He equated my videos to other guitar example videos by way of the underwear he had ordered for his wife. He basically said that once it was delivered and tried out at home, it failed to recreate the impression given by the teenage lingerie model in the catalog. 🙂
His point was that my simple examples of music, used over and over, “put the focus on the guitar and not the amazing chops of a guitarist who could make an Esteban sound good.”
On the same day, I received a comment on my site from another reader who I do not know, saying, “I really appreciate what you do and am in awe of your talent regarding translating what you hear into words, something that is far more difficult than can be imagined. Your professionalism, wit, and thoughtful comments always make one confident in the knowledge that you impart in your reviews.”
So I must be doing something right.
Considering the Source
As for your personal comments relating to things I have said to others about you [Redacted from the above communique,] you simply have no idea how many people I met in [your home city] and elsewhere who encountered you under other guises than the one you have presented on the guitar forums.
But really, I haven’t bothered about such things for years.
I met one of my all-time favorite people and had some of the most fulfilling and enjoyable experiences of my entire life because of your subterfuge. I am indebted to you for that more than anything else, and I always felt a little sorry for you that you needed to embellish yourself when you were plenty charming and entertaining without your suspect connections or masquerades.
Sure, I was taken aback when I first figured out the person with all the famous friends, who considered me worth flattering for some reason, wasn’t who he claimed to be. And yes, I did tell a few people about my revelation during that initial period of shock.
But I was truly surprised to hear in reply that some people had already known all about you and your machinations, from sources independent of mine, and told me much more that they had known for years before I found out about you, but which they chose to keep “back channel” for their own reasons.
That was what? Almost ten years ago now.
And while you may continue to influence the minds and opinions of various people of a trusting, well-intended nature that have yet to learn better, I would bet their number is outpaced by those who do know better – without a word being said by me about any of this.
When it comes to the internet forums, the long list of isolated, ‘just between you and me, because I love you like a brother and I don’t just tell that to anyone…’ type of communications you engage in, often focused on disparaging the reputation of various individuals, famous or familiar, through almost too hard to believe accounts of shocking or vindictive behavior, has long been compiled by a much broader collection of aware individuals than you would ever allow yourself to believe.
That fact brings into serious question any attempt on your part to confide with anyone about anything construed as being in their best interest.
Facets reminiscent of various iconic guitars embellish core elements with some rarity about them, making Mr. Martin’s CEO-8 an appealing musical instrument that seems familiar yet very much its own entity.
A Grand Jumbo body of sycamore and a Sitka spruce top torrefied with Maritn’s VTS – Vintage Tone System
“The fundamental notes leap out from the strings with a good deal of pop to them. They are quite solid, yet slender, with space between each, and between the fundamentals and the expansive harmonic tonescape humming below, around, and above them…
While not as warm as mahogany, sycamore’s tonal palette has extra presence down below when compared to maple or cherry, and the Grand J size makes the most of it. The large body promotes that bottom end, which is helpful to drier, leaner tonewood, so each plunk, thunk, and nuanced picking holds its own with the punchy mids and vivacious treble…”
Custom Shop creativity exudes from the new Martin CS-00041-15
A Limited Edition of 75 Instruments
The Martin CS-00041-15 is made by the Custom Shop, in the 000 size, with Style 41 appointments, and produced only in 2015.
“There is a rich throb in the bass that is a bit fuller and more pronounced than typical for an Auditorium size Martin. At the other end, the treble lifts out from the voice, pristine and with thinner fundamental notes reminiscent of the old 000s and OMs of the 1930s. Framed between them, the focused notes of the midrange solidify like firm little gems. But during extended playing, the resonant undertone permeates up around the midrange, smoothing it out, as heard in other modern rosewood Martins with this body shape. And just like its voice, the feel and looks of the 00041-15 offer the sort of never-found-together-before array of facets that has come to epitomize the CS guitars.”
With all the projection and string-to-string balance heard from the legendary first modern acoustic guitar, Martin has resurrected their original Orchestra Model in the OM-28 Authentic 1931 – the most anticipated addition to the Authentic series in many years.
Martin’s historically accurate Vintage Gloss Finish makes its first appearance on this new OM-28 Authentic, and heard for the first time is a refined version of their Vintage Tone System of wood torrefaction, reserved exclusively for the Authentic series of vintage Martin reproductions.
“…I approved of how it responded at every level of attack, and how it felt in the hands, both in terms of the tactile experience of holding it, and how the strings pull and release, as well as the clarity of the notes and how they pop out, yet stay connected to the resonant undertone glowing behind them.
Even though this OM requires little effort to reach the “sweet spot” of optimum resonance with minimal resistance, this is not a frail instrument. In fact, it flourished with a certain amount of extra string tension from the fingertips. It was like it said, “Oh yeah. That’s the stuff!” when I would increase the pull on the strings, so it could convert that potential energy into kinetic energy, and ultimately full, unbridled tone.
That was but one of the subtler prewar Martin traits to be found in this new OM-28 Authentic 1931.”
Here is the sneak preview of the video I shot on Thursday of the NAMM 2015 Martin Guitar offerings.
A full-length video of each model will appear with the exclusive written review at One Man’s Guitar, approximately once a week.
Information relating to all sorts of NAMM-related products from various companies will be receive attention in the coming week. But first things first. I spent the biggest night of NAMM at home in front of my computer, synching and editing the exclusive video I shot of the NAMM 2015 Martin guitars, during my annual NAMM day visit to the Martin factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
I sat down at 3PM with the videos already synched to audio, ready to begin splicing together the annual compilation video. I finished at 3 AM. And now that it has processed on Youtube, here it is.
Watch on YouTube in full 1080p HD
For more information about torrefaction processes and how they relate to luthiery, and on Martin’s proprietary VTS version of torrefaction, please go HERE.
The NAMM show opened today out in California, and I made my usual trip to the Martin factory to see the new 2015 Martin Models.
At the factory I get to the see the prototype that wasn’t chosen to go to the show, and I get to play and hear this runner-up in a quiet room, unlike those at the NAMM show who get to try to hear acoustic guitars in the equivalent Mall America on Black Friday.
I didn’t break a fingernail all day!
Don’t you hate that when that happens?
I did some other stuff too. Was fun.
Anyway, I should get to bed. Been a long day, the first day out of the house since I came down with the flu over a week ago. Left at 7AM and got home just a bit ago.
So I will just say for now that there wasn’t a disappointment among the entire crop of new 2015 Martins and the NAMM Show Special is a big hunk of shimmer koa goodness in a Grand Performance body and drenched in pearl inlay and the CEO-8 looks a lot like a Gibson J-200 and sounds more like a Gibson than any previous Martin, when it comes to the spindly thin trebles and quick chirping strums, but with a lot more going on inside the voice in terms of overtones and sustain and the CS 00041-15 is an effortless joy to play and hear and I think my favorite Custom Shop Series offering to date even if I might have preferred the CS#1 neck profile over the high performance neck but this short-scale 000 is just so effortless and woody and lovely and alive and tension free like playing it made me feel like I just had a long massage at some ritzy resort and the D-35 50th Anniversary model made from Madagascar rosewood with a Brazilian center wedge has a wild evocative reflective glimmer thing going on in the trebles and muscled Grade A Beef in the bass and is a marvelous idea well wrought into living breathing dreadnought and they did X-Ray and CT Scan the 1931 OM-28 and 1930 OM-45DX that were used to make the new Authentics and if Martin had chosen to keep this whole dialed-in torrefaction spruce top thing secret and had released these two guitars without saying a word about how they were unique in that respect, people might have thought Martin had changed something about the cosmetic toner used but otherwise they would be doing stationary back flips over just how good they feel and look and how great they sound, and how the longer torrefaction used on other new models, now called M2, can be HEARD, is a discernible thing and a certain kind of ring thing and recognizable, tangible, but the M1 version on the Authentic Series guitars is less so, is subtler or at least quickly forgotten about as the whole voice just seems, well, really good, and those who know nothing about prewar Martins would think the OM-28A is a wonderful guitar that needs no pampering with a wide dynamic range but just gets louder rather than roars when played harder but those who do know about prewar Martins would whistle aloud as they quickly recognize that the OM-28A just has so MUCH about it that is “just like a pre-war OM-28” only more so than they or perhaps anyone has managed to put into a brand new guitar until now and I would love to fill a room with TJ Thompson and Eric Schoenberg and Roy Bookbinder and David Musselwhite and George Gruhn and Fred Oster and Robert Corwin and Bob Hamilton and a 1931 OM-28 and an OM-28A and some other very close modern reproductions of OM-28s and other prewar OM-28s and have them all just pass them around and drink coffee and talk about what exactly is or isn’t right on the money in that guitar or that other guitar but in the case of THIS guitar it is really splitting hairs and trying to catch sprites and faeries in a jar out of mid-air to quantify and qualify what may not be exactly the same as the old timers, because there is just so much that IS, and it is still not going to be for everyone who loves rosewood OMs since so many modern versions are built to do what a dreadnought can do just in a smaller body with subsequent shifts in balance but with all the roar and rumble when running in overdrive, where this thing compresses and just gets “louder,” you know like a prewar OM does and the Dreadnought Junior is I am happy to report so much cooler than I had feared and is a lot of guitar for the money and the size, but this example left me wanting a low E bass string that had the same dominant pow in ratio to the other five strings as you get from a bigger dread, which the fancy full gloss full dovetail R&D version did have but still it was fun and has a very fast neck and so well made we will be seeing some young professional one-upping Ed Sheeran someday soon and the Purple Martin is a classic Cocobolo dread that is dense in weight and in the bottom end tone that looks so amazingly pretty in person with its inlaid pearl flowers and the big soaring bird but it very much preferred a light and pretty playing that brought out the singing ringing highs, where the koa version released previously wanted to be run like a stallion and really did roar as well as shimmer, but I think they had light strings on this one for some reason and the action was way too low for someone with my kind of digging in attack and suddenly it was 5:30 and everyone had gone home and I hadn’t even taken any photos but that was because I couldn’t let go of that OM-45DXA because how often do I get to play a $100,000 guitar that isn’t even a pre-war Martin “just” an amazing replica of one but we happened past the cart containing all the new models as we were leaving the plant and so I grabbed a stand and hurried through as many shots as I could squeeze off and only made the bus because it was later getting to the bus station than I was and I hope some of the photos will be usable and that all the recording and video is too.
Did I mention the OMs were really good? I’m sleepy.
by 
