1969 Martin D-28 Dreadnought Guitar

A customer sent this ragged, beat-up old dreadnought in for fixing some time ago. It's been played and repaired in various ways a half-dozen times, but after fresh work it's playing like a champ again. The neck is thin, narrow, and fast like a rock-n-roll machine and the sound is punchy, direct, and growly. In short: I like it. It's a lot more accessible for fast flatpicking than even slightly-earlier Martins that tend to have clubbier, chunkier, soft-V necks.

Work included: a neck reset, fret level/dress, replacement bridge install, crack cleating on the back, seam repairs on the top, a new bone saddle, new ebony bridge pins and endpin, new tuners install, and a good setup. The neck is straight and it plays on-the-dot with 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE action at the 12th fret, strung with 54w-12 gauges.

Scale length: 25 7/16"
Nut width: 1 5/8"
String spacing at nut: 1 7/16"
String spacing at saddle: 2 1/16"
Lower bout width: 15 11/16"
Upper bout width: 11 1/2"

Side depth at endpin: 4 7/8"
Weight: 4 lb, 10 oz

Top wood: solid spruce
Back/sides wood: solid rosewood
Neck wood: mahogany
Fretboard: ebony

Neck shape: ~16" radius to the board, thin C-shaped rear

Bridge: replacement ebony

Saddle: replacement bone

Condition notes: beat-up but functioning fine -- several repaired top cracks, several repaired back cracks, minor repaired side cracks, lots of wear-and-tear and pickwear to the top including some old, epoxy-filled areas (model railroad style!), replacement tuners, and replacement pins.

The nut is original but the tuners are replacements of replacements. This had gold, Grover Rotomatics on it that were certainly "a sight." These Grover 18:1 Sta-Tites are a lot better and save weight and improve functionality. I did have to do some minor filling to the chewed-up shaft holes, though.

The board had a lot of grunge needing to come off of it -- and there's still a bit I missed, too.

The owner supplied me with the nice, StewMac ebony bridge.

There's plenty of saddle, now! When this came in it had a bridge that was maybe 1/8" high after it'd been shaved-down a ton.

Here's the final detail needing to be addressed: a section of binding that's dissolved and chipped-off over time. This is because of a player's arm sweat! How about that? I wanted to take a picture before I replace it, because I think it's actually more badass this way. I'll see if the owner can be convinced to leave it...!

Yum, yum, yum for rosewood.

Someone repaired a hairline crack in the headstock in yesteryears, too.

The back of the neck, with its half-bare, half-chipped finish says it all about how much this instrument was loved.

This came with a yanked-out acoustic pickup and its remainder-jack leavings. I plugged the hole and then drilled it to fit a new ebony endpin.