1979 Martin D-18 Dreadnought Guitar

A bluegrass special! This D-18 has a bunch of punch, clean and growly mids, and a lot of sustain. The low's nice, too, of course. It's also pretty dang clean. Let's keep upselling, right? But seriously -- I like it. It's a good, practical guitar.

This one arrived via consignment and was in good order overall, but needed the usual work to get it playing its best. Now that it's done, the action's low and fast, the saddle's tall, and it rings-out a lot better than if I'd left it as-is with a low-saddle setup.

As usual, this has a solid spruce top over solid mahogany back and sides and the build quality is just as high as you'd expect for an old, US-made Martin.

Repairs included: a neck reset, fret level/dress, new bone saddle, cleaning, and setup.

Setup notes: action is fast with 3/32" bass and 1/16" treble height at the 12th fret, a straight neck, and plenty of saddle height for later adjustments if needed. Strings are standard 54w-12 lights.

Scale length: 25 3/8"

Nut width: 1 11/16"

String spacing at nut: 1 1/2"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/8"

Body length: 20"

Lower bout width: 15 5/8"

Side depth at endpin: 4 7/8"

Top wood: solid spruce

Back & sides wood: solid mahogany

Bracing type: x

Fretboard: rosewood

Bridge: rosewood

Neck feel: medium C/soft V-shape, ~14" board radius

Neck wood: mahogany

Weight: 4 lb 4 oz

Condition notes: it's all-original save the saddle. There are a few small nicks/dings/scratches here and there and there's the usual weather-checking to the finish from age. There's a bit of darkened finish on the top-lower-bout (elbow-wear). There's also a filled strap button screwhole at the bass side of the heel (on the side of the guitar near the neckblock) and a filled endpin pickup jack hole at the endpin area. A Fender-style strap button was installed into the filled endpin hole. Both of these were "before my time." The original pickup is extant and mostly good, but its edge towards the bridge are curled-up just a bit. The fretboard extension (over the body) dips down from the rest of the board slightly (reverse of "ski jump").

It comes with: its original hard molded case.