david's d35

Last day of 2012 and if you don't like guitars (or my ongoing ramblings about them), you'll want to skip ahead to next year... 

After our trip to the Bugman, I borrowed David's 1970 (there must be some '70's theme here) Martin D-35 to pass along my Christmas present - a thorough cleaning, new strings and the addition of a case humidifier.  If you don't know by now, I love beautiful wood - whether the tone is coming from an acoustic guitar or simply the sound of its name.  Walnut, oak, ash - these are the woods of my home.  Mahogany, rosewood & spruce belong to places only my mind has travelled.  Since 1933 the CF Martin Co. has been making guitar backs & sides from Honduran Mahogany and Brazilian Rosewood, but by the 1960's over-harvesting had put rosewood on the endangered list - so much so that large scale use of it became illegal. Martin's first solution was to quit using large pieces of Brazilian in their two-piece backs and move to smaller pieces (once considered scrap) formed into a three segment design.  In 1965 the famed D-28 gave birth to the D-35, and by 1970 Martin moved away from Brazilian (in high production guitars) & David's guitar was made from East Indian Rosewood. So much for the sustainable history lesson, the bottom line once again - good tone wood, nice light & shallow depth of field gets us here.