05 Aug '13 22:465 edits

dOriginally posted by mikelom
Very well spotted, indeed. You know your guitars! It is indeed a Martin 0018.

-m. 🙂

It wasn't hard. I have a D-35 and a 1944 0-18. Great little guitar. The 35, not so much. 1973, worse year EVER for Martin, they had just gotten rid of those snippy luthiers and relied on the production staff. Mine is falling apart, bridge pulled up so far it is out of tune and the only thing that will fix it is a total new top. The 0-18 is worth TEN D-35's.

In 1963, I was in Denver going to electronics school for the USAF and there was a folklore music shop, Harry Tuft music and he had a brand new D12-20 which I bought for 390 bucks back then. Great 12 string. I was sent to Lincoln AFB (now no longer an AFB) and spent 3 years there. Pete Seeger did a show in town and the local folkie, Roger Welsch, (he recorded Sweet Nebraska land, which I have in vinyl) and a few others, made quite a name for himself in the world of journalism later. Anyway, he invited me to a pub where Pete was holding court🙂 and I brought my D12-20 and he played it, I asked him what he thought of it, he said it's a nice guitar, a bit small🙂 (he plays this gigantic 12 string almost as big as a guitaroon)

What I liked about that little Martin 12 string was the wide neck. I found out you could take off the strings that made it a 12 sting and leave it with just 6 and it sounded great but I loved the wide neck, about the same as my present R305.

Of course after I got out of the AF, I drove straight back to Denver and while I was checking out an apartment, some assshole stole EVERYTHING in my car, two martins, a Gibson classic, a Gibson ES175D, a Christy 5 string banjo, two huge mechanic tool boxes, all my clothes. I was stripped dry in 20 minutes on the first hour back to Denver. The only thing that turned up was a worthless 5 string banjo that made it to a hock shop. EVERYTHING else was gone forever. I still grieve!.

Our resident luthier is at Meadowood music and he wants megabucks to fix ANYTHING, probably wants 2000 bucks to give my 35 a new top. About 5 times what it is worth🙂.

But my honey is a Washburn R305 parlor guitar, a washburn reproduction of the 1898 original. It is a sweetheart, wide neck 1.75 inch 12 fret. It has really sweet upper end sound and decent bass. I would much rather have that than the other way round which you find on so many Chinese cheapo's.

I don't think mine was made in China anyway:

http://www.banjohangout.org/classified/6933

This ad has pictures of my little sweetheart.

I was surprised to find it tuned rather nicely to open C (open G with the 6th string tuned to C, a Hawaiian tuning. I wrote a few tunes in that tuning.

A genius by the name of Don Slepian, electronic keyboard master played Hawaiian guitar professionally in Hawaii for 9 years before coming to the states. I had been using open G for blues and such but had no clue about the drop C BIT. When he showed me that, I kept my little R305 in that tuning for 3 months straight🙂.

Google Don Slepian if you want to hear a master on electronic keyboards, he is a great pianist also. He transcribed Jesu Joy of mans desiring in that open C tuning! Nice C bass. He used to have an internet radio show where he would noodle for 20 minutes on the keyboards, totally improv, then have a featured performer for an hour or two. I played there with Jodee James and one other dude once.

He moved to PA near us, relatively close, used to live in Jersey and gave up the internet radio show for now, I think is close to starting it up again.

He had some great musicians on his shows! A few years of archives.

Oh yeah, one other credit: He was NASA's official resident musician! Go figure. Well they do music for their NASA TV channel. It's channel 201 on our cable here. Sometimes very interesting. They show sometimes the ISS astronauts floating around giving a talk, it's funny the way they can let the mic float in mid air while they talk!.

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More great guitar: Stig Mathisen, Preludium: