Martin D-15

I have always loved Martin guitars. Neil Young plays them for one, as does Jackson Browne, Dylan...in fact just about every great folk artist has played one at some point in their career. Martin have been making acoustic guitars since the 1800's and the company has remained in the family since it began (with each head of the company having the initials C.F. just like the original founder) so you know they might have caught on how to make a decent guitar in that timescale.

So they make great guitars..but they also make bloody expensive guitars and let's face it, most of us musicians are poor. Now I have always wanted a Martin acoustic so last year I decided to start saving and bite the bullet.

Well I finally got one a few months ago. It's a D-15 and I couldn't be happier.
Now to be fair it is the poor mans martin, its the entry level all solid wood Martin.
There are cheaper Martin's but they are made of a combination of laminate and solid woods and utilise stratabond necks yada yada (some of them are really nice guitars too if you are not a wood snob).

The D-15 is made of solid mahogany or sapele (I think mine's is sapele), it has a mat satin finish which goes all shiny in the bits that you tend to touch more so it starts to look all beat up quicker.

After months of saving and researching and playing different guitars I decided that I wanted a D-15. Number one because it was a good few hundred quid cheaper than the other solid wood martins, 2 because I wanted a dreadnaught (d stands for dreadnuaght which is the body size/shape) and 3 because they look cool (I like hog guitars).

I played a good few different Martins and other guitars and while it would be nice to have bought the phenomonal D-35 I played it was just way over my price range.
So I fell in love with the 15 series. In fact I found it hard to make my mind up between the D-15, J-15 and the 000-15.

I decided to stick to my guns and get the D.
Then just before I went to buy it when I had all the money saved I came across a great deal in the window of a second hand store - I saw a 1 year old D-28 with a Fishman Ellipse Blend pickup system for only 1100 quid. I played it and it was really feckin nice too (the D28 is spruce top over rosewood back and sides, tasty), I talked the guy in the shop down to 1000 so it was a steal.

But I didn't buy it...

I dunno why because I probably could have sold it at a bit of profit too. But as nice as it was it didn't grab me the way the D-15 I had my eye on did, there was a certain character that wasn't there. I dunno if it was just that particular D-28 but there was just something I really liked about the 15.

Sometimes you gotta go for the underdog...(or the underhog in this case :p)

But thats what guitars are like, some of them speak to you, some of them don't, it's all personal and relative.