In this episode, you will learn the following:
- The early days of the OM, and how they related to (and prececed) the Dreadnought shape
- The different styles & levels of OM ornamentation
- Why Martin doesn't offer an OM-18 - and why Maury's Music is bringing it back!
- - -
Maury is the co-owner of Maury's Music - one of the largest mom'n'pop Martin Dealers in the USA, 20-years running. He also hosts "Guitar Store Virtual Tour" a weekly livestream, Wednesdays on YouTube, as well as the Mystery Guitar Podcast & Martins & More Podcast with Spoon Phillips.
Related Martins & More episodes you may enjoy:
Out of Production Martin Guitars: In this episode, we'll be discussing some of our favorite Martin Guitars that are no longer in production. The OM-28 Marquis, D-18VS, HD-7 Roger McGuinn - they're all here - and more! Special thanks to our loyal listener Jeff, for suggesting this topic. Sit back & relax as Maury & Spoon get their "out of production" chat on.
Humidity & Your Acoustic Guitar: Today, we'll be discussing humidity and acoustic guitars. If your guitar is constructed of tonewoods, this episode is for you. Unless you have a carbon fiber instrument, your acoustic guitar needs to be in a healthy environment when it comes to temperature and relative humidity. Too dry, and the wood can crack. Too damp, and the wood can swell. What does it all mean? We'll explain.
- - -
🤝 Send Maury a message here
❤️ Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
Connect with Maury: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter
- - -
This podcast features the conversation and opinions of musician T Spoon Phillips. A writer by trade, Spoon's longtime association with professional musicians, luthiers, and music historians affords him a richly unique perspective on all things acoustic guitar. This includes decades of close friendship with executives and employee at C. F. Martin & Company, past and present, and the host of this podcast, Maury Rutch of Maury’s Music.
Follow this podcast on your favorite platform:
▶ Apple Podcasts
▶ Google Podcasts
▶ Spotify
▶ Podchaser
▶ iHeart Radio
▶ Stitcher
▶ TuneIn / Alexa
TRANSCRIPT:
0:00
Welcome back to Martins and more my name is Mari rich and I'm spoon Phillips and
we have a lot to talk about today what's going on spoon well it's actually a very nice day let's
say I at least here in Brooklyn I hope to maybe get out and see a little bit of it but still you know late winter chill
but that could be a lot worse and um and I'm looking very forward to
Today's Show as a matter of fact we had a listener bring up a topic for a
possible show that speaks to the heart of myself and Mori
so thanks very much for that suggestion because today's topic
is the OM oh I misunderstood I thought it was
um no it is the orchestra model the only
problem with that is what does that mean it actually means different things to different people so
uh but a lot of people know that right now Martin offers models called OMS
which stands for orchestra model and this is a guitar that's got a body
that's smaller than a Dreadnought or a jumbo or a grand performance uh it's one
of their traditional body shapes it has the exact same body as a triple o or
triple lot or triple knot and uh but they have some differences the OMS of
course have a long scale neck nowadays most Triple O's have a short
scale neck and in the old days that was a major uh
demarcation between an OM and a Triple O back before the reimagined standard
series appeared in 2018 OMS also had a wider fingerboard and
wider string spacing than Triple O's today they both use the high performance
taper with one and three quarter inch width not where it used to only be OMS that had a
one and three quarter inch width nut and they both have a two and one eighth inch width at the 12th fret when the
orchestra models used to have two and a quarter wider spacing wider string spacing and now today they both have the
two and five thirty seconds of an inch shrink spacing so there the OM and
Triple O's have gotten closer together all OMS have quarter inch bracing scalloped and the long scale neck most
Triple O's have a short scale neck and most Triple O's have 5 16 inch bracing
but the triple o18 has a quarter inch bracing so the OMS are
more consistent in that sense so Mark why don't you just take us through what OMS are available that come
off the top of your head for sale now at Laurie's music
well I'll be happy to and that dives right into the reasoning that you just spoke of depending on who you ask and
how you ask it we can say that there are a certain number of OMS in the catalog that are specifically titled om and
there are also some guitars in Martin's current catalog in 2023 that by All rights they are OMS because they have a
one and three quarter inch nut and they also have a long scale length but Martin still calls them Triple O So to keep
things sort of easy to understand I'll answer your question more deliberately and I will let you know that the Martins
that are currently available as an OM are things like the om-28 the om-21
om-42 and then some nice variations of the om-28 you can get it with a pickup
system the om28e comes with either LR bags or Fishman Electronics or you can
graduate to the om28e modern Deluxe and I jumped over them a little bit
accidentally the om-28 is also available in a modern deluxe without the electronics other popular guitars that
are still in the current production the OMC x1e black ome cherry and the omjam they're going
to round out what you can basically buy from Martin guitar at any authorized dealer in the year 2023 there are some
more custom options that we like to order in and we can certainly let you know about them as the show progresses but you do have a pretty healthy choice
when it comes down to which om would you like and that's not even counting those
triple o guitars that Martin calls Triple O's that kind of really are OMS anyway
that's true and and there's a lot of reasons these overlap and and at times
can be confusing and you really have to go back to the very beginning and the history of that which I'm going to get to it in a little bit but I want to put
in my own thinking cap to see if I can remember any other OMS that might
be out there still and I can think of one that wasn't
mentioned that is an artist's signature model
and last Mario mentioned it really quickly so hmm so that can be part of our trivia
question we're gonna have two trivia questions today then one of them is what Martin om
is for sale today that is an artist's signature model Edition and I look
forward to reading the comments on the YouTube version of this podcast to see who might have gotten that and
then I'll ask the other trivia question a little bit later so uh it's interesting when you go
through this what immediately pokes out to me from this did you mention all these om-28s and they own 42
and uh and nowhere do I hear the word 18
anywhere and that always makes me very sad that they don't make an om18 with mahogany
back [Music] but they have not here and there and
they probably will again and I wouldn't be surprised if we see a uh om-18 modern
Deluxe very soon either so yes so the OMS are considered
extremely versatile they have a long scale neck with a auditorium-sized body
that's what they call that technically that's used for the OM and the triple o and
it has the same depth of the double O but a wider top little larger Sound Hole
a little bit longer top and when you mix a Long scale string tension on that size
top with scalloped quarter inch bracing that makes it very uh
reverberative top and it vibrates easier and you put all that long scale tension
into it the energy that it produces gives you a very big voice with a good
bass response it's considered one of the most even sounding so that the mid-range and the bass and the treble are
basically on the same plane so finger style players uh often drawn to it but
you can basically do anything on an OM that you can do on a Dreadnought which Mari Rich proves over and over again
when he plays his well-worn om-28v from the vintage series and
today's modern ohm 28 is virtually identical it just doesn't have the V wider v-neck as as I mentioned it's got
the modern high performance neck but uh would you say that's a a pretty big seller oh yeah I certainly would not
just at Martin but here at Mary's music the om-28 really really is one of the best sellers and for for good reason and
we get a lot of calls and emails all week long asking for expert advice and most of those customers who come to tell
me they want to buy a standard series Martin and they do a healthy mixture of finger style and heavy strumming the
om28 has to get recommended and it's just because I've I know that's what it does that's why I chose the om28 as my
own and like you were saying a moment ago it's just one of those things the extra string tension when I whenever I
think of Designing a Martin guitar or how they build Martin guitars when you want to achieve either a bass boost
the trouble boost balance voice the two things that really come into play are the depth of the guitar and the size of
the guitar so a very small double O that's got a a top that's not very wide
and it's a very shallow depth that's going to give you one sound when you go to another extreme a Dreadnought with a
very deep depth from top to back and a big wide top that's the Other Extreme
and you can basically play with those ingredients to get a sound that you're looking for and the OM uh by no accident
just really arrives near the middle so you're not overly base heavy you're not
lacking bass you're not quiet you're not as loud as the Dreadnought it's it's the
medium of of Martin guitars as far as I can tell and a lot of players that call us up that take the time to ask for
advice it's there aren't that many people that this wouldn't really suit well it's it's
not it's not fair to say it's the right guitar for everybody but if there was one right guitar size for almost
everybody I'll say that it's the OM from my very first understanding of Martin
guitars and and I came to that relatively late when I was a teenager and and well into my 20s I I didn't pay
attention to what brand of guitars famous people played and all that I just knew what I liked the sound of turned
out it was the Martin sound that people like Neil Young were getting and out of
their acoustic guitars but when I first started looking into Martin's and was in
New York City after the university and started going to guitar stores uh guitarist magazines like acoustic guitar
would have advertising for Eric schoenberg's shop in Massachusetts and
eventually moved out to California he actually started in Pittsburgh and and his Schoenberg soloists
which were a joint venture with Martin where he was a big lover of the 1930s
OMS and had gotten Martin to make poems that had much more vintage appeal to
them in terms of the specs and the bracing and the and the particularly the big v-necks and it cut him but he had
cutaways with them too which is not traditional and um and they're uh they
cost a lot of money and I would see them in magazines and I always you know wanted to have one and uh the first ones
were basically uh made by Dana Bourgeois and his assistant TJ Thompson that with
Martin materials and then they would ship them to Martin for construction and then after that uh after Dana pulled out
uh TJ took over as the main Builder and as far as you know TJ did all the
pyramid Bridges and all this uh most of the vintagey stuff for Dana anyway uh
and the and the neck joints and all that and then after TJ went away Eric Steinberg got a variety of Builders to
make these and I think after the after TJ Thompson that was the last
involvement Martin had with it and then he went off and and just kept making them with with small uh Builders but um
but that got me turned on to the idea of the OM and then I I met up I would start going to Mandolin Brothers which was
that soaring Staten Island that was basically a Hands-On guitar Museum and this was back before vintage Martins
were showing up in guitar stores because they were uh the price didn't really skyrocketed yet so I had yet to see a
venture toe M but uh Larry waxer who is now a private dealer uh like private
vintage guitar Hunter Downer for people who can afford that sort of thing he had written an article
um about would you rather have an oh if you could go back in time to 30s would
you rather have an OM or Triple O and that then got me even more interested so
um so I ended up buying uh the very first om18b that came out of Martin and
uh but prior to that I had a bush mahogany om
because Martin wasn't making them and then after that I ended up getting a used om28 VR and the rest was history
and I've you know I had a deep body om uh signature model from Pat Donahoe uh
Donahue Who was the the guitar player he was a he was a national champion uh finger stylist but
he also was the guitar player on the Prairie Home Companion for years and years and years and uh and um things of
that nature so I was always omo mom but as I got older I a lot of people know I
converted to the short scale and I so now don't play OMS um but I still love them and I still
think they have Superior tone I also I've owned a couple of the Juber uh models and I think like you said
it's the most versatile between the two of us we've said it's the most versatile and kind of in the center of all that
martin-ness is the OM and I think they sound uh different than M's which have a
wider top I think the M's give you more of a triple o sound which I hear is being gathered and Punchy and really
forward shooting where the OMS into my head sound more expansive and more like
a expand in all directions and give a much more rounder bigger wider
projection so big fan of the OMS and
I'm surprised there isn't one right now in the 16 series
um because they've been various om-16s in the past so um well won't be surprised we don't see one of those
um and uh and tell me about those om modern
deluxes and the uh authentic series om 28 1931. uh did you sell many of those
we sold our fair share of the om28 Authentics we didn't really do as well with them as we've begun to do now with
the modern Deluxe and you know no doubt because of the price point uh it definitely took some people out of the
running when it came to what they wanted to buy when we had an opportunity to give people choices back when the 28
Authentics were popular the people that did get an opportunity to play them were almost always singing in their praises
but you have to remember the Authentics there are some things about that model that aren't as kind as far as
playability or adjustability when you get an authentic guitar you might love this sound and not like the neck you
might love the action and the setup but you can make adjustments as easily because the Saddles are glued in the
truss rods are either missing or they might be t-bars or they might be in there as a truss rod but not adjustable
so making a commitment to an authentic isn't always about just the price but you have to definitely make sure that
you like a guitar that you can't set up as quickly yourself or make adjustments on the Fly as much as I can turn the truss rod on
my om 28v or you know change the saddle anytime I want those things really can't be done on an authentic without some
real work it doesn't mean you shouldn't look at them but it's it's something you should definitely bear in mind when you're in the market so to answer your
question we didn't sell as many of them as we would things like the om28 or even the om28es but I have to suspect a lot
of people that could afford either one either got scared away from some of those authentic features or you know
maybe for other reasons they just went with a different guitar I think if I'm remembering right most people who came in our store years ago looking at the
Authentics bought some sort of an OM if they didn't choose the authentic so it wasn't very often that somebody pushed
the authentic away and got a dread or got a double O I think if I'm remembering as hazy as my memory can be
people that made their mind up to go in that direction probably settled is the wrong word but those that
refuse to go with the authentic probably went with something a little bit similar but same size but I I'll tell you what
when I say that some of my best memories of Martin fests in the past are centered
around someone's om28 authentic because that guitar there are some really really good sounding instruments at Martin Fest
and that guitar is always at the front of my mind that's a shout out to Stan the Man Down in Jacksonville Florida who doesn't
bring it every year but he we've been very fortunate that he's brought it more than one year and so we actually get to
see that guitar grow up and it is proof positive that even though those uh terrified tops have officially stopped
aging because they've very blasted the blast them with such high heat it's crystallized the interior so that it's
you know basically already a 90 year old piece of wood um they go you know all the glue joinery
and and other aspects of that guitar definitely uh advance in uh in terms of
tone production as the years go by yeah they they owe him 28 authentic 1931 has
a it has a v-neck and and ironically it's uh it was taken from Mike Seeger's
own 20 1931 om28 it actually has a pointer V that a lot of OMS from 1931
and 1930 which are notoriously comfortable as vintage v Mexico and
um so it's interesting they they you know they always take a guitar that is in a hundred percent uh all original
condition to make an authentic and and Seekers om was so they used that and uh
I just thought it was interesting that that because I got I played I played that actual guitar and of course the
authentic prototypes and stuff and and it's not the most comfortable 1931 om
neck I've ever played but um whereas these modern deluxes
have the uh vintage Deluxe neck profile and that was actually copied from a
vintage om the 1930 on 45 Deluxe that sown by the Martin Museum which it may
have the most comfortable vintage neck I've ever played I absolutely love the neck of that guitar and
um and it's a asymmetrical neck so at there's a there's there's a little more
uh meat on the base side of the V than the treble side it's like a faster roll-off on the treble side and not only
that the V points of the V the Apex of it doesn't just run straight down the
neck like it does on Modern uh guitars and modern V and modern v-necks it
actually drifts so as your hand turns you know if you just picture your hand
playing let's say a uh open c chord down at the nut and you slide that up the
strings and your elbow tips in and starts pointing down to the floor and your wrist turns so you have a very
different grip when you by the time you get up to the seventh fret and on up to the neck all up to the the heel and that
V drifts so it stays in the nuclear poem and it's really very super comfortable
um and that then inspired them to to come up with the the helical neck they use on those new
fancy CS models um SC models rather and um but anyway
the modern Deluxe major difference between the modern Deluxe neck and that actual old om is it they have a modern
heel so it doesn't get as thick as you come up into the upper frets as an
actual vintage uh Martin so uh super comfortable all the way up and super
Sleek almost electric guitar Sleek when you get up in you know as far as you can
make that F shape oh that first position F shape all the way up the neck you
still get a nice Sleek neck and so it's really my favorite uh neck shape today
major difference in the om-28 there's kind of a trivia question there's a
major difference in the om-28 modern Deluxe than the other modern deluxes and that is it still has what
they call the standard fretboard taper so it's two and a quarter at the at the
uh 12th fret so it's got the feeling much more like a a pre-war om than any
of the other models in the modern Deluxe because it's got the wider fretboard which a lot of finger style players are
very happy about and I know our pal Lawrence Juber who for years played
modified v-necks on his signature models uh his private custom that they made for
him recently actually now has the modern Deluxe om neck shape on it because of
his own uh you know as he's just like me you get older and you're in your hands
start to get creaky and so he's got some arthritis issues so he now has the modern Deluxe neck on his most recent
private uh OMC so very cool guitars and they do link back to the 1930s and so
you started in uh 06 I believe so your shops opened in 06 the grand opening
nope oh three oh three I always say I always get that wrong I'm so sorry so O3
okay so 2003 but you already had your om28v when did you get that
oh I got yeah I got the om28v back in 1998.
and it came to you as a gift as I recall it certainly did I got my money's worth
out of that thing and the Gift Giver I got has got a lot
of money worth out of that rolling pin that she has to wave at you now and again yeah so that was a present from
your were you married at the time yes that was a gift from Santa on our first married Christmas and I will never
forget it yeah awesome awesome story oh yeah mine was purchase used and uh and
so mine was I I think it was a 96 it was a VR when they still had the r for Rosewood on the
stamp same here yeah oh yours is the VR I thought it might have been um yeah I thought it was and mine is now
owned by a very dear friend in England um again when I had to give up v-necks
um just about the same time I was giving up the long scale I had to move that on
[Music] let's pause for a moment and listen to a Martin om this is the Martin om-28
is rich in lore and history and I'm going to go back and try to get through
this fairly quickly Martin guitars from 1833 into the 20th
century were 12 fret guitars and looked a lot more like what you would consider classical guitars and of
course we're primarily got string they didn't get into steel strings until the night early 1900s when the Hawaiian
music craze came out and they started making steel string guitars for people who played with a slide and typically as
a lap steel sort of playing um and that led them to then start
bracing guitars a little heavier so they could be used with with uh gut string or steel string and by the mid-20s they
were well into everybody's going steel string so we're going steel string two
a lot of people uh were under the impression and we're given the impression that the first om
came about when a famous banjo player named Perry Bechtel who had a jazz
Orchestra out of Atlanta Georgia came to Martin and said now that guitars were
coming out with steel strings and Jazz was moving more and more into the
guitars um and and Gibson had sent him an L5 but he didn't like the sound of it and he
went to Martin and said could you make take take your largest model and make me
a longer neck guitar and that's how the OM came about a modern scholarship has actually shown uh
that's not true once once uh once people went in to the archives and really went
in through the archives and started seeing the correspondence and and they learned
that if I remember correctly it was a fellow named Al Esposito he had a name
similar to Esposito if it wasn't Esposito exactly and he worked for the
uh Carl Fisher uh music company in New York City
and he wanted Martin to make a 14 fret
tenor guitar to appeal to tenor banjo players and so in 1929 maybe 28 they
made the Carl official species they made the Carl Fisher special and the Carl
Fishers and the Carl Fisher special that's easy for you to say exactly uh it
doesn't look like other Martins it's kind of got a kind of a roundish bottom bout and a
smaller taller well maybe it's not smaller but it's a taller upper bout but
it's not shaped at all like a typical Martin and it's got an extra long 14
fret a neck they had some issues with it it uh and so it wasn't ordered again and
Martin took that and in 1930 they came out with their I think they called it an
oh let me see if I remember this okay called in an oh 2018 I think it was a no
I'm sorry it was not it was o18 it was an o18t for tenor and so they took so
they basically reshaped it made it a shorter neck and around that same time
that they were working on this Peri Bechtel was going I'd come up to Pennsylvania to go on a fishing trip
with Frank Henry Martin and so uh Bechtel who was working for the uh cable
piano company in Atlanta in addition to being a band leader he worked for this uh musical instruments uh company he
came up to go fishing with Frank Martin and while he was at the factory he saw
them working on a Carl Fisher model and he said could you make me a six string
guitar like that and he originally wanted 17 Frets I think he asked for
um and they ultimately came back to him and said you know that's that doesn't work well here's a we'll do a 14 fret
and so they made Perry Bechtel what is essentially the first om-28 it was I
think called a Triple O 28 special and we all thought for many many years
that it was the first om-28 uh scholarship not as recent as the whole
coal Fisher thing had shown people through the correspondence that was
discovered in the archives again between Perry Bechtel and Frank Martin that his
guitar actually had its slotted headstock and and was shaped in like a not an arrowhead or maybe like a snake
head shape to it and we and some other things that were different about it and we don't know that much about the guitar
because it was destroyed in a fire uh he didn't own it very long before it was
destroyed so we have no idea what the real uh what the first uh om the
peribectal uh triple o 28 special really looked like but it immediately made
Frank Martin say we should sell these and so in very late 1929 they started
making the om-28 and the 1929 slash 1930-128 was the first 14 fret guitar
sold by Martin under their own name and it is considered the water mark it is
where and the and the uh and the place where Modern acoustic
guitar really took off because everybody started making 14 fret guitars people
experimented with 13 fret guitars and 57 15 fret guitars all that Martin's om
basically revolutionized the Guitar World um they were built very lightly they
were called Orchestra models to appeal to Jazz Orchestra leaders
and at Martin and the OM didn't just mean that body size it meant any guitar
that was had a 14 fret in that so when you see the uh dreadnoughts came out in
14 Frets in 1934 when they converted their entire line to 14 Frets they're
actually advertised as Orchestra model size d so this is what I meant when I said om
an orchestra model can mean different things to different people so basically at Martin
up until this century om meant a 14 fret guitar even though
they only called the models they sold OMS that were the auditorium size with the long scale neck
quarter inch bracing and a one and three quarter inch width nut the OM have evolved very rapidly because
they were very lightly built they were basically what they really did is they took their their 12th fret triple o size
which was the largest model they offered under their own brand at that time and
they squashed the shoulders down to kind of flatten them out to expose two more Frets they also had to move the brace
you know the bridge placement as a result and that's where they came up with the with the uh the first om shape
that was used for uh Mr Bechtel and then also the original OMS
um they then strengthened the bracing a little bit um and so the original OMS had a 5 16
inch cross brace xbrace and quarter inch tone bars they did not do that again on
OMS until the authentic series because modern guitars were built a little heavier and and finished a little
heavier and so when they brought the OM back late years later they used all quarter inch bracing but in uh
the original M's people know had a pyramid Bridge like a straight Bridge with the pyramids on the side they quickly went to a belly bridge for their
steel string guitars when they realized they needed that extra tension um though of course many people have
straight Bridges and pyramid Bridges out there and they'll have any problems with them at all Martin felt they for
warranty reasons they felt the need to use the modern belly Bridge which is you know deeper and has more wood behind the
pins the old OMS have smaller Maple Bridge plate and then when they decided
they were going to convert their entire line up to 14 fret guitars starting in 1934 they retired the OM stamp so they
came out with the m28 the om18 and the om-45 and then in 1930 only they had the
brief run of their own 45 Deluxe there there's still some debate about how many were actually made and they believed
there were 12 in all possibly 11 some people think they may have been 12. and
um and I guess I think when they discovered that Roy Rogers om-45 Deluxe
wasn't actually listed with the other ones they've decided they were 12. I think that's how it went and um and his
uh his was unique his had a different uh pick guard uh inlay pattern than the other ones and they also made two om-42s
as a special order for some dealer and uh Style 42 back in those days had a
much shorter fingerboard marker pattern it had that big round uh snowflake at
the fifth fret and there was no markers above the fifth fret fifth fret so it
looks different than snail 42 we know today um and then so in 1934
they changed the stamp so and by that time you only had the om-28 and the om18
uh turning into a Triple O 28 and a Triple O 18 and the om-45 became the
triplo45 I don't remember if they were making the 45s in early 1934 but for
those out there who don't know this a 1933 om 28 or om18 that was built
completed in let's say December 1933 and a Triple O 28 or Triple O 18 from
January 1934 or the exact same model they still have the long scale neck they
still had the same bracing and everything was identical and then we don't know how far into our I don't know
how far into 1934 they decided to take the OM long scale and bring it back down
to the short scale so that the Triple O's and the Double O's and the O's all
had the same short scale so early 1934 Triple O's are in fact exactly the same
as late 1930 OMS so and so the arms went away and then they got rediscovered by
certain musicians uh people like Eric Schoenberg in the 1960s when people were getting into Ragtime guitar and finger
style guitar people started rediscovering the old OMS and in 1969
Eric Schoenberg went to Fred Martin and convinced him to make a short run of
om-28s for the first time since 1934. 1933
and uh ironically I was quite shocked that Eric claims that he didn't even
occur to him that it was the anniversary of the 1929 introduction of the OM so I
always thought he purposely did it because it's his 60th anniversary of the OM and and it turns out it had never
occurred to him so there was a brief run of om 28 to 1969 and I bet you there are
Uber collectible I would love to see one and these would have been Brazilian rosewood and the big v-neck and wide
string spacing and all that um and then the OM started showing up a little bit here and there in the 1980s
in um they made a limited edition that was
basically the same thing as an om-28v may have been slightly different in in very little respect in respects that
same year uh they made a special model for the Sing Out magazine I think 35th edition
anniversary of Sing Out magazine uh was uh also a vintage style om-28
um the om28so with a label signed by Pete Seeger and um he wasn't an OM player but he's
involved with Sing Out magazine and then they came out with a couple of what they called the guitars of the month some people may remember guitars of the month
they didn't really I don't think make one every month but that's what they called them they actually did an hom 35
with a three-piece back and they did some other kind of guitar of the month oh it was
omc28 so this is all before or in around the beginning of the vintage series when
they started making the om-28 um the OMS didn't enter the catalog until 1990. if I remember correctly and
they came out with the om-28 which had a black Pickard and big white Domino Dots and a white binding just like the D28 at
that time period and an om-45 that has hexagon markers and looks like the d45
from that era these have one and three quarter inch width not two and a quarter
inches at the 12th fret two and a quarter inch string spacing which is a little narrower than vintage om's string
spacing and a low profile neck they then decided
um shortly after that to retire both of those and replace them with uh less
expensive OMS and those being anybody remember the om-42 and which has the
fancy cat's eyes and snowflake fingerboard markers and the om-21
the om21 at that time has Indian fretboard and Bridge and micro dot uh
little micro dot what they called style 16 I think is what they called those little tiny dots on the fretboard and um
big seller sold very well for a very long time style 20 that's when style 21
reappeared and this time it didn't have it had black binding and later tortoise
binding and I think maybe the original m21s all had tortoise binding but Rosewood triggerboard and Bridge and no
no purifling around the edge of the top or the back very uh plain in terms of
trim but really interesting Woods usually and a big seller so the M4 21
ohm 42 were thus basically has been in production ever since and they both got
the big revamp uh in 2018 with a reimagined series we
have the vintage series we mentioned those are great om's Lawrence jubers uh fantastic signature models Adirondacks
Bruce with uh cutaways those are based on the om28v with the v-neck and uh but
it has two and a quarter inch strength spacing marvelous guitars they made them in Rosewood they made him with mahogany
they made them in KOA they made them in Maple and there were I think some dealer
runs out there in other Woods too um and let's see the only let's see other things you want to think of is the
Richie Sambora was an OMC 41 that's a very cool looking guitar oh yeah and it
has a companion 12 string that's an m so that's a pretty pretty cool match set for somebody who likes pearly Martins
um so during all this time the Triple O was still there and the triple o was down to
the triple o 18 and triple o28 occasionally the triple o 45 these
guitars by 1946 became non-scallup braced 5 16 inch bracing
um we don't know exactly when they lost the quarter inch tone bars we don't know if it was right when they changed the
scale or if it was a little bit later but Triple O's from the late 40s onward were non-scalloped 5 16 inch bracing
short scale neck with a 1 and 11 16 inch nut and all the way up into the time
that Maury and I started playing Martin guitars the triple o 18 and the triple o 28 with the last remaining standard
tripolos same thing short scale dots on the fretboard black binding or white
binding black Pickard or a black Pickard on both of them and so they were quite
different from the OMS and it was only in the 21st century did those two Triple
O's get revamped and get vintage styling and get scallop bracing and for whatever
reason the triple o 28 has 5 16th in scallop racing the triple o 18 has quarter and scallop racing which I
always called om bracing but they're short scale and so they do not sound the
same they sound similar to if like we took 100 customers and they we sat them
down with a triple o28 and an om-28 today a bunch of them would say I don't hear
much difference but I think I think plenty of people will I certainly do I
think the OM gives you a little more base presence I think gives you a little more I think volume is perceived
differently I think the fact that the heavier bracing and the short scale to me gives a much more of like a column of
sound coming forward where the element has more of a expansive out and around and more pronounced undertone and I
think I hear the harmonic resonance more and more ethereally you know the way those hormones hover in the air and um
and and I think also the OM gives you a bigger kick when you're playing hard
when you're when you are basically using it like the way you you use a Dreadnought again if you ever see Moray
performing in concert with his om 28 uh VR you'll understand exactly what I mean
about being able to really put out sound and really dig into them and and and mine a lot of power out of
them and I think uh the Triple O's are very good my guitars are short scale now
and I um except for one and uh and that's for
practical reasons with my hands and fingering and all that stuff and stuff I do on the fretboard so but I still love
the sound of an OM so that was a quick hopefully not too long ramble from where
the OM started and where it's ended up and how the triple o actually separated from the OMS when the OMS were
brought back they were quite different kinds of guitars and in the 21st century have become much more similar in terms
of in terms of neck and and at least in the case of the 28s and
42s that have bracing I think I got it but just in case tell
me the whole thing again I wasn't listening [Laughter] so I'm curious to hear other people's uh
read other people's comments about all this um and I'll just mentioned that one
guitar that I I have that's long scale is a Triple O C 16 from 1995 I think and
those guitars were the closest thing to an Oma team that Martin had ever put out since 1933 because it was short they
have uh quarter inch scallop bracing at a time when the triple o 18 had 5 16
non-scallop and it has a long scale neck they decide not to call it an OM because
it doesn't doesn't have the wider om neck it's got this and it's actually got a 22 fret neck because Martin's original
cutaway Cuddy way margin Brian's original cutaway is the one with the oval sound hole that you guys will see
at Times online and um they needed to do that because they
wanted to give it the 22 fret neck of an electric guitar and so it's a deeper cutaway with a they had to squash The
Sound Hole uh into an oval shape to make room for those extra Frets um and I sort of wish they still did
that but because it's a pretty cool design um so everybody it's time for you to
write Martin and say bring back the om18 and the OMC 18.
let's hear it not only that you have to write mari's music too I got to tell you I listened to that whole story you have
literally motivated me to make an announcement on this podcast I haven't thought about this prior it's just
something I'm going to spit out we are going to bring back the om18 at mari's music I'm going to make a custom order
with Andrew later today we're going to bring that guitar back to Market even if it's only in our little store it should
not be put aside like it has been and all this talk about all these 28s 42s 21s
coming from a Rosewood lover myself I still have to admit it there is a place for the om18 and we're gonna do it
woo three cheers three chairs for Mori
you better buy them that's super cool that's super cool so
um yes we'll do we'll we'll discuss so here's my trivia question uh one of the
signature models I forgot to mention which I believe is considered the very first signature model
was the om28 Perry Bechtel um and I think officially it was called I'm 28 Perry back till 1933 because they
didn't want to have to deal with banjo tuners which I forgot to mention is what were on the original Orchestra models
because they were trying to appeal to banjo players which by the way didn't really work very well not many bandwids
but the OMS who the people who did buy the OMS were the radio stars like Roy Rogers and and Gene Autry they bought
the OMS and because they found they uh they worked very well when when playing
in front of a microphone in front of an orchestra on the radio um but anyway Perry bechtel's om uh
signature model is very similar to the LM 28v in fact it came out three years after the first om28 VR but um I think
the only difference it has wider string spacing and maybe the shape of the v-neck is different but my trivia
question is can you name a famous American musician who was in a songwriting team that
dominated Progressive popular music in the 1970s
who owned an om-28 Perry Bechtel
and a second hint Mario's banned the shell shock Church
Hills and his other part-time band dork with the silent f
plays multiple songs by that songwriting duel wow so I should know it but I don't
[Music] be very surprised to learn Walter Becker of Steely Dan
no way really way Guard Way
[Laughter] s supposedly I saw you know somebody
bought it and uh and was proclaiming it you know on the internet that he owns Walter Becker's own 28 Perry Bethel so I
think that's pretty cool I never knew that certainly when he was alive because I uh and back in the 70s I didn't know
that much about acoustic guitars yet to to wouldn't I wouldn't have known a prairie Bechtel from a
from a George Jones but um but I thought that was pretty cool
so uh that's wild I know Steely Dan has meant a lot to you over the years
so now you're happy to know that you had similar taste to a good old Walter
so we have so much in common he and I but I have to say you guys do a bang-up
job when you're stealing and stuff I've always been very impressed uh at your ability to play that stuff uh probably
it's very impressive so check out the shell shock Churchills and the Dork Fest videos on YouTube see what I'm talking
about um well thanks very much moon for saying that we do have a lot of fun we're taping this show ahead of time but if
you're in the future and you have Marty McFly's DeLorean you want to go back in time to March 11th we're going to be at
the Jim Thorpe Broadway Grill but of course that's impossible but you missed a good show let me say it that way
so here's the answer to the first trivia question what is the Martin om model that's a
signature model that's still available for sale today
so the omjm is was inspired by the om28v but it had a low profile neck and it has
an Engelman top and the original signature model also had some some inlays and stuff that were unique to
that limited edition uh the for sale version in the catalog isn't as fancy
but it has the ingleman top and it has the low profile neck and does it have a 1 in 11 16th inch low
profile neck it does yes yeah okay that's what I thought so I do have a couple of pieces of
housekeeping I should get to before I forget to wrap the show up we were talking about all the OM guitars you
could buy from Martin all the guitars that are in current production that you can find anywhere there are some guitars you can only find
at Mary's music we bring in things like custom shop om28s with Adirondack top
om28 with an Engelman top om28 with an Engelman top and a pickup that kind of
pushes the things towards the om-28 John Mayer that you remember and there's always that very famous guitar that only
a couple of people can ever aspire to have it's the om-28v Mario Roots replica
we actually took the time to go and spec out a VTS topped om-28 with a v-neck
that kind of recreates my guitar minus the boogering up the soundhole that you have to do yourself but we do strive to
bring a lot of guitars to Market that Martin won't really make anymore and that's just a short list of what they
are and the one thing I wanted to ask you spoon many customers that call us and ask us what's the difference in feel
between a Triple O and an OM I often suggest this next thing because I I have heard it said on on forums and all over
the internet if you take a regularly tuned to concert pitch om and you detune
it a whole step so instead of your base note being e Your Bass note is going to be a d if you do that and then you put a
capo on the second fret it's it's not going to change the scale length so you don't you don't get to feel the difference with Frets being closer
together but kind of you get a feel for what an OM sounds like versus a Triple O
A detuned om with a capo on the second fret is kind of like what a triple
though sounds like being tuned to concert pitch without a capo what are your thoughts on that spoon is there any
Merit to that I would say uh except to use the word sound we originally started talking
about feel that gives you some indication of what the string tension is like and that's one of the pluses of the
tripolo is that if you're both if you're using the same gauge strings the triple it's easier to bend and you can actually
get a full uh almost electric guitar full band out if you're strong enough
out of a Triple O that you're not going to get out of an OM obviously for people like Lawrence Juber and whose hands are
like little gymnasts that he doesn't even think about that so uh and he actually uh you know uses uh strings
that have a medium for the Unwound strings and and the and the big bass
string at the top and then Triple O I mean lights gate strings in the middle of them there but so so it's really up
to the person feel wise for me uh again you you mentioned that you're not
getting the scale difference and that's a big difference the particularly when you start to go up the neck the Frets
are just a tiny bit closer together so the stretch is not as as extreme and and
for people who have short thumbs like me or have or otherwise have in my case you
know old injuries things like that that are bothering me these days that's a big difference for me I like the OM power
more um but I like the string the uh the the spacing of the Frets and the bendability
of the strings better on a tripolo that being said I use cutaways when you get up by the
12th fret or above the 12th fret the Frets are a little too close together on
the triple o compared to the OM so you get some traffic jams up there I mean I
can still do it I still play up there all the time but it's a really close
call in terms of trying to finger more than one string and uh you know and and
doing things on top of your fingers on top of each other and a tripola where the OM just gives you a tiny bit more
you would hardly know it notice it until you until you really run into those traffic jams that om is a is a little
easier to play up the neck because the Frets are farther apart where farther
down the neck the Triple O's easier to play because the fronts are closer together so it is a bit of a trade-off
but I think that's an interesting question because I I have actually done that myself in
the past and and uh tried that out and I I'd say it's it does give you an idea of
what it's like to play the short scale guitar and the SLA slacking strings probably helps it sound a little bit
more like a Triple O but I still think you're probably because the bracing
difference if you're talking about the triple o 18 maybe because that has the same brace size as an OM the the uh the
triple of 28 triple 42 have thicker bracing so I don't think you're getting an exact sound comparison
um but I think it's an interesting experiment for people to try who don't have the opportunity to to go play a
Triple O if they have an OM all right guys so I'm going to make you a deal we're getting near the end of the
program here I'm going to give you some extra credit but you got to do us a solid I'm going to tell you a little bit more about what you can do if you're
looking for an OM guitar for Martin and if you found value in this podcast please consider sharing it with just one
person even if it means you have to pull them aside take their phone out of their hand and help them find out how to get
to Apple podcasts please help us spread the word it's your job after this show to go and find just one person that's
all we could ever ask for if you're looking for an OM guitar from Martin and all the models we talked about still
aren't enough you can also look at the triple o15m the triple o15m Street master and the
triple o10e as spoon would agree these are all guitars that have the OM size the OM scale length and the one and
three quarter inch nut very good point so this goes back to the
fact that in the 1990s Martin started making some Triple O's in style 16 and
eventually style 15 that have the long scale neck because that had become the industry standard and they wanted to
compete directly with other makers of relatively inexpensive guitars in that
body size and so the 15s have stayed true to the long scale at least for now
it's very likely Martin's going to change the triple o 15 to short scale at
some points just to just to have everything be the same with a Triple O
on a stamp but a very good point I'm glad you pointed that out as we wrap up today's program on the Martin om models
so don't forget don't be confused Orchestra model used to mean any Martin with a 14 fret neck and that
corresponding body shape in any size but they only ever sold cars with om and the
model stamp that were in the auditorium size that is shared by the OM and the triple o
yes and please take a moment to let us know in the comments section of the YouTube version of this video what is your favorite Martin om
from all of us at mari's music thanks for listening hear you later
this has been a presentation of mori's Music your trusted source for Martin and Blue Ridge guitars
find Us online at maurysmusic.com [Music]
