In this episode, you will learn the following:
- Whether or not you need to wait 24 hours before opening a cold guitar box.
- If you can adjust your guitar's action with the truss rod.
- If scalloped bracing really is superior to non-scalloped bracing.
- - -
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.
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❤️ 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.
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TRANSCRIPT:
welcome back to Martins and more my name is Maury Rutch and I'm spoon Phillips
and we have a lot of things to talk about today how you doing spoon I'm doing very well thank you I'm just at
the very end of my first spring head cold but it's uh it's actually the very
first cold I've had since 2019 in terms of you know the classic
Street probably some people can probably hear it I'm a little stuffed up but um I
have to say I it was a pretty long stretch of staying cold free so I guess I was due how about
you well stuffy Phillips I'm feeling much better than you sound I've actually skated right through the cold and flu
season with uh knock on wood here comes the giant Jinx I'm actually feeling pretty good I was outside in the
beautiful weather today and the sooner we get this list out of our system I think we could both get outside in the sunshine if anybody listening out there
wonder what the weather's like today wait to see how short this episode is
actually it's very interesting important episode I think I was I was very excited
when Maury wrote me and saying why don't we do a a special
episode inspired by certain comments and questions from some of our listeners and
and I actually just sent Maury a list of some items as well that I have picked up from
my own website ONEMANZGUITAR which everybody knows is onemanz.com with a
Z with a z one man's with a z which uh some things that some of my own readers
have written to me about and if you feel something's a little bit off on this episode it's probably
because we're on the Dick boak hangover we just came back from our last episode which was over the top fun you guys got
to go check that episode out if you haven't seen it yet dick Boak invited us both to his private home his private
Workshop to play his private guitar collection not guitars that he bought but guitars that he built and I don't
know if we can really compare that to this because it's just the two of us there's very little guitar interaction
but I just got to tell you on record spoon that was so much fun and we got to get back there sooner than later to hang
out with our friend dick poke absolutely it was a wonderful time and he is an absolute not just a living
legend but he is a living encyclopedia and resource of so much
Martin history and uh he you know was very good friends with CF Martin III uh who he met when uh
CF was in his 80s and uh CFM imparted a lot of knowledge that had come from his
grandfather and his father before him and um so we're going back to the
literally the 1800s that dick was one degree of separation from the Martin's
Mr Martins in the 1800s which is fascinating and and it's really good at
dispelling you know a lot of myths that have built up about more guitars over the years and which ties right into this program
of uh that we consider a mythbuster episode
that's right who are you going to call let's go to the phone lines and by that I mean let's go to the YouTube and the
Twitter and the inbox of the emails we had some of our friends actually tell us what they think a good myth would be to
talk about the first one that's staring me down the barrel our friend Phil says let's talk about the myth that Rosewood
is better than mahogany just kidding how about heavy gloss versus satin or open
poor finishes affecting the sound and resonance how can you know when the wood quality is different from Guitar model
to Guitar model so I'll start first by saying anyone who thinks that the fact rosewood's better than mahogany is a
myth can just get right out of here right now stop listening unsubscribe take us off your phone of course I'm
kidding you guys know all about the tongue-in-cheek Rosa versus mahogany that I probably instigate too much but
Phil brings up some good points and I'll to further the first one to use we want to let you go first and then I'll I'll
rebut whatever you say what do you think about gloss versus satin and that kind of question from Phil where how do you
know when the wood quality is different from guitar to guitar well it sounds like you came out with
like four different myths to possibly bust so I'm gonna begin actually by just
pointing out as we've said before that Rosewood being better than mahogany or
um is a you know of course a matter of personal preference and I was very much mahogany for a great deal of my life and
actually liked uh mahogany more than Rosewood and then
I got seduced by the dark side of that Lusher more complex harmonic uh array
that you get out of Rosewood and and and similar Woods like uh makasa Ebony
mccaster Ebony and so forth but but every time I play at Rosewood for a long time and I go to Mahogany it seems wimpy
it seems bright and not a lot there just kind of dry and bright but then I
stopped my ears stopped looking for what isn't there and I start hearing what is there and then I come to really love mahogany
and when I go back to Rosewood Rosewood seems too thick and muddy and overly
complex and and almost to the point of being distracting until I readjust so I
keep I put kind of polarize between those two woods so so that's one myth
thrown out is of course it's all a matter of opinion um though I do prefer those two types of
wood over all the other kinds of tone Woods except for Spruce I'll have to
shout out to dick again and he showed us these guitars he's making completely out of spruce and they sound wonderful
unique but plenty of basic response much greater bass response than than I
originally expected and I'll probably bring some of that up and some of the other myths we're going to be busting well now we're going to go to the uh we
talked about a couple of different things you mentioned uh you mentioned satin uh versus glass and you mentioned
uh I know he mentioned pore filler and he mentioned uh you know a wood quality
so I will will just start with uh why don't we do we'll separate those three
so let's start with with gloss vases Satin
I guess the myth is that what's better than the other if anybody has played uh the very
high-end wonderful guitars by George Louden and Son yeah from Northern
Ireland they are satin finished guitars and they are wonderful and there are
other major Builders out there that build with satin finishes they're definitely not the same and even
inside Martin they're not the same when it comes to these new standard series satin models this is not the same Nitro
cellulose lacquer that's used on the high gloss it is a catalyzed lacquer
it's still a true lacquer but it's not exactly the same and it's also put on uh
with a uh with less thick thickness because it doesn't require as much
buffing as you need with the Nitro and so it's uh it looks a lot like Martin's
vintage gloss but it is not the same thing and satin finishes definitely make
a guitar sound differently um but as I think we've proven in the in
the videos that we made of the new satin models against the traditional
nitrocellulose high gloss finish uh the d18 and the d18 satin have more
in common with their sound than differences so
um I don't think people are being shortchanged by spending less money to get the satin model but it's definitely
not exactly the same I think they have a more open area quality you can feel the
vibrating body in a way you don't from that thicker
Nitro finish that seems to hold the body in place more I think that just makes
the wood reflect sound waves differently but you're still talking about uh you
know everything else about them is identical really good quality so what is your take on satin versus gloss this
topic is timed perfectly thank you Phil we really recently got to try the satin versus the gloss like spoon mentioned
and if you would have asked this question 10 months ago not that we wouldn't know the answers but it's really great to have this fresh in my
mind anyway I really feel like Saturn and lets the guitar breathe and it certainly does have some kind of a
characteristic where the mid-range especially maybe even the the upper mid range there's something a little more
vibrant about how the guitar's Decay happens and if you strum a full gloss Martin it's not fair to say that you're
putting a broken over it and it's a negative thing but conversely I'll be really honest when I play a d18 right
before I play a d18 satin there is something more open is going to be a cliche word it's not necessarily louder
but there's a projection that's maybe a little bit less compressed in a satin
finish guitar not so much that it Bears you know spending another 20 minutes talking about it but the truth that is
not a myth I really do hear a difference so if we can kind of take you know Phil's tongue-in-cheek comment about
Rosewood mahogany and he made a quick comment about speak on the differences from gloss and satin I'm not even sure
Phil is trying to say that there's a myth here but if anybody thinks that satin and gloss sound exactly the same name I would say that's definitely not
true I hear a difference I'm really anxious to playing more and more of these you're listening to somebody speak on a
podcast who's played millions of d18s in the full gloss treatment I've only played three three different times a d18
with the satin finish so I have a lot of catching up to do but first impressions are they do certainly sound different
yes and I think when they sound differently again just like Rosewood mahogany it is not uh necessarily mean
one's better than the other and there will definitely be people who prefer one over the other I think it's a marvelous
idea because I think there's a lot of non-martin people out there that have been playing other brands that think
about getting a Martin but their ears have just been conditioned or
uh tuned toward certain kinds of sounds and Martin just doesn't provide them
that sound well this is another option for them to feel like they're getting a real mutton from the standard series
with the Philadelphia neck joint and the whole bit and um but actually has aim that more
less excuse compressing is a very good word for it there's less compression in that voice it's not as if thick and
solid of voice which many Martin lovers love that sex solid robustness of the
traditional Martin voice so that's great I think it's uh you know time will tell how popular they are but uh so it is
it's definitely a myth that they sound exactly alike and um and uh it's a myth
to say that full gloss is definitely Superior tone moist well just as I was about to call you
Sneezy Phillips I'm going to call you Segway Phillips because one of the other topics on this list has everything to do with the dovetail neck joint our friend
andorra's Revenge says how about more info on the Sonic properties of the
dovetail joint and I would love to know who did what to Andorra if his name is andorra's Revenge look out I want to
know more about that I want to know if he's referring to Andorra the grumpy mother-in-law from
Bewitched that I grew up watching as a kid well perhaps there's also a country
called Endora so maybe that's what it is but um back on topic we probably should
have said this at the very beginning that these are of course our personal opinions and I'm very opinionated when
it comes to the dovetail neck joint and um much more so when it come came to the
mortise and Tenon neck joint that Martin came out with in the 1990s
um and uh and actually told their sales force and their district sales managers
that you have to say that there's no difference in tone whatsoever
and that I mean it just simply wasn't so uh there's all you know there's always
going to be a difference as sales famous they said you know a guitar is a box
that rattles and every single thing you put on it or do to it uh affects how
that rattles so um but now Martin has the simple
dovetail neck joint which is a very good name for it and it's uh it's smaller
it's uh less complicated it requires less uh
um Precision from the human uh dealing with the uh putting it together and all
that sort of thing though nowadays Martin has you know they've perfected uh
the laser cutting or however the robots cut the woods now that the the
full-sized dovetail and this simple dovetailer actually created in simpler ways now but what you're basically
talking about um first of all I'm mortise and tendon a dovetail is a mortise and tendon uh the
mortise and the tendon are the two pieces of the joints basically the male female aspect of the joints so a
dovetail but the traditional dovetail is a wide V that's shaped of course like
the tail of a dove and uh you'll see it in in furniture making and you know any
kind of woodworking you'll often see different kinds of dovetail joinery
the good thing about the traditional dovetail neck join at Martin and other
companies that use it like Santa Cruz and Gibson is that you have a lot of masks from the
neck in the joint so vibration from the neck is getting into the neck block and
vibrating the neck block which then transfers more energy from the neck into
the tone wood body that is that is
generating the sound waves that um you know that take the
the take the sound wave from the string vibration and turn it into a tone and the tone that we hear
um the large intended neck joint which is still used in Mexico on the on the X Series and and uh Road Series I believe
um uh traditionally in the old days had a plywood neck joint so that was another
part of as well the traditional dovetail neck joint had a solid mahogany neck block the m t joint didn't and there was
definitely a difference it was a it i i people would say that of the on
the positive side that the once intended neck joint uh was good for acoustic
electric guitars because it had less of that wavering
uh undertone and that the sustained tone of the Martin it didn't waver as much
and so it was more feedback resistant other people say that they sounded
brighter and more vibrant and there was no coincidence that fans of Taylor
Guitars when they would go to buy a Martin would often buy a Martin from the 16 series back when they had m p neck
joints because it had a similar tonal property where you hear the fundamental notes clearly and they stand up and are
kind of separated from what I call the the body resonance where the traditional dovetail sound that you hear from Santa
Cruz and traditional Martins that body resonance swells up into that those
fundamental voice the fundamental notes and you get get that wavering which some people don't like and they want the
callings and and uh Olson sound of the very pure notes that stay very pure and
very in their lanes and there's much to be said about that sound Martens and Santa Cruz guitars Gibsons don't do that
those sound kind of wavers around and as far as I'm concerned it is because of
the dovetail neck joint so that's my rant about the dumb Down Neck joint the downsides of the town that joint is
they're not adjustable it requires a good deal of work when the neck and
eventually the spring tension will put the neck out and you you end up having to pay money where a tailor you can you
know very learn very quickly how to probably reset your own neck in a dressing room if you have to as leukocy
does regularly so that's you know there's negative tides in terms of the practicality of it but um so you bust my
myth Mario I just defended the uh the claim the legend that the dovetail neck
joint you know has a particular sound in it is definitely a part of the traditional Martin tone
I just want to also point out I may have said mortis and tendon because I have a tendency to do that but I think my
stuffed up my stuffed up nose is kind of making me turn the Tenon into tendon but
uh Morrison Tenon uh neck joint well I you probably know I do have mortise and
tendonitis sometimes if I play guitar too much but stupid jokes aside I can't really debunk what you said but I will
tell you that there are a lot of times I've seen people talk on forums and
times I've talked with top people at Martin guitar and our friend John Hall of Blues Creek guitars and some other
builders or you know maybe hobbyists that are that know enough about building it's very rare
that I've come across two guitars made by Martin were deliberately the only thing different was the neck joint so I
don't know if they're really good examples out there besides an r d where you could play a 1990s you know D16 one
made with dovetail one made with the m t or see I'm going to call it m t and be
careful I I don't really know that I've had the opportunity to say there's the only differences there and you could
correct me if I'm wrong some of those 16 series guitars the bracing that they put on an m t guitar
wasn't exactly the same as the x-brace and it would go on a similar build maybe
if we compare a D16 GT from back in the day to a d18 I don't know that you could
really say these sound different and the only thing that's variable is the neck joint but it
doesn't mean I disagree with you I think there's certainly a reason Martin graduated from m t to simple dovetail if
m t was great and there wasn't any Sonic difference I I think that spells out that they needed to get better than m t
and the fact that the simple dovetail is a graduation from that working backwards
it tells me they weren't thrilled about m t to leave it well enough alone so I won't debunk you but I wanted to throw
that in there too yeah I think that's important it's funny you bring up the D16 because their first
d16s were full dovetail neck joints and had Ford shift just got up bracing and
then uh some pencil pusher you know brought in the m t as a way it
was brought in entirely as to maximize profits and it's uh and it did maximize
profits but the very first D6 teams that were made right at the right at the
change and triple o16s are as close as you're going to get what you're talking about however the m t required the
A-frame braces those two slanted braces v-shaped bracing that come from the off
of the x-brace up under the neck joint to help hold the neck joint in place and
it has a bolt in there as well and people would say well the Bolt's just there until the glue's dry but they didn't remove the bolt but it's not a
true bolt on the neck in the sense that it still had a mortise and Tenon uh by the way uh the Morrison tenant X had
been around before Martin uh Michael Gurion was is credited I think with developing the first modern mortise and
tenant system uh his guitars were very popular uh Jackson Browne was his main
guitar that you see him playing in his early part of his career um they have kind of a rounder almost
classical guitar sort of shaped to them and you know and it usually had sort of
elaborate uh rosettes so you know I mean they're definitely you could definitely get great guitars out of all kinds of uh
you know non-duff-tail configurations uh just look at all the you know Hussain
Dalton callings callings kind of has a dovetail and you know the bolts and the
steel rods in the neck and all that and um Jim Olson you know lots and lots and
lots of Builders the dick boat coach cars we just played were Mt neck joints and uh and though I think he's moving
away from that uh actually but um but with some of his future guitars I think he's going to get away from that
and they sounded wonderful so um I'll just end by saying like you said
with you only played three satins it is possible to play lots and lots and lots
of Martins with dovetails and Martin's without with simple enough tales and
start to hear the similarities simple dovetail I do not say is signs identical
to the full dovetail you don't have as much mass in the there's not as much energy transforms from the neck to the
neck joint um but it's much closer than than the
sound of the m t frankly I think the m t you don't get the pure what I call the violin Purity in The Trebles it had a
harsher uh I'm trying not to use negative words but somebody uh
it wasn't raspy but somebody had used a word that I thought really nailed it down that wasn't a negative sounding
word but um I should also point out that Martin nowadays they got rid of the uh
at some point they also did get rid of the plywood neck joint and they started going with a solid sepo neck joint so I
think even the road series have a solid wood uh a neck block rather I think the
block now is made out of solid uh some form of solid mahogany now and they've
done away with that that uh inferior plywood neck block so yeah so again my
opinion I know what I hear I definitely played an enormous amount of guitars uh
focusing and would play them for people in in guitar stores and ask them without telling them why I was asking them to
describe the difference between the guitars and stuff and and I think you play enough dovetails and enough non-dubtails whether it's Baldwin next
MNT next um you start to hear the similarities between dovetail neck joints and Bulldog
neck giant joint guitars no matter who's making them we're going to shoehorn that into a question so andorra's Revenge the
way he phrased it more info on the Sonic properties of the dovetail neck joint we're going to change that to myth
dovetail neck joint sounds better and I'm gonna say not busted
next question Roslyn our friend Rosalind says I'd like to think there's a Mojo in each guitar
the tree from which it was made the people who made it people who played it and now mine to take care of and play
until it's passed on to the next person it's probably a mythical thought but it's comforting except for that one
guitar that was very judgmental of my playing in the beginning but which made me practice more so you want judgmental
you came to the right podcast we're judging you right off the bat Rosslyn that's a pretty good question and I'll
tell you that I'm glad to talk about it it's funny we talked to Mike Dickinson I don't know maybe seven or eight
podcasts ago and he made a good point about wood selection and he's the guy that buys the wood for Martin the tree
that it comes from and the actual piece of wood I could almost speak for spoon the tree it comes from the piece of wood
that certainly got to make a difference I wouldn't say that's a myth that's certainly a truth to me is there Mojo in
each guitar my bass player always made the joke where he didn't like to watch that program How It's Made he watched
the program how it's made on a Friday and you could kind of you know assume that there are some things that happen
at Martin guitar on Tuesday or Wednesday but if you get the wrong guy after going to see his favorite band on Thursday
night comes in Friday just doing the bare minimum get me out of here I don't want to be at work maybe that guitar has
less glue in it I don't know there that's of course it's a joke but I would have to think the way that Martin's
building guitars there has to be some kind of a difference even though they would probably never admit it that one
guitar serial number 20 is going to be built a certain way I can't believe that serial number 19 and 21 are exactly the
same guitar as far as the the care that went into it I mean it has to be some kind of human variability so I'm gonna
buy into your idea that there is Mojo in each guitar for the people who made it now when you say the people who played
it no doubt about that for me either if you give me your guitar for a year you're going to get it back with x
amount of vibrations that had happened the way I play my guitars you give it to somebody much more careful I would like
to think they're going to sound different afterwards and the fact that you're going to be the caretaker of a guitar until you pass it on I like your
question from top to bottom and I'm really curious to see what spoon thinks about these coins but I'm going to take this topic and
start at the back and move forward I will say that when you buy a brand new guitar that absolutely you are going to
be teaching that guitar how to play your music and it's going to react whether
you're a soft if you're just a soft finger stylist who barely you just use at your fingertips and that's all you
ever do and uh three years from now that guitar is going to blossom into a particular
guitar if that exact same guitar had gone home with somebody who only played with thick picks and big giant hard
robust strumming three years from now that guitar is going to sound very different and I know people who love
that about buying a new guitar I know people who don't want to buy used guitar because they don't want somebody else's
DNA Sonic DNA in there but I think other people will love the fact that Rosalind
has loved that guitar and had taught it to play her music and it grew to respond
to her music and now they get to the benefit of that and get to also add in
their own Panache and their own Mojo if you will um when it comes to word when it comes to
that tree that piece of wood um all that I'll say two things one that
may sound contradictory one is I believe that Martin guitars now particularly in
the standard series of professional level guitars 16 Series standard series on up
they are more consistent guitar to guitar within a given model than probably any time in their history they
are their their quality control and the way they uh the way they create them now
I think you're buying a D28 or an hd28 in Miami or or Seattle or St Petersburg
Russia you are getting uh much more the same guitar that you were
hoping to get and um and yes of course every piece of spruce is a little different but
everybody should remember that the lowest grade Woods at Mark guitar are
still much higher quality than most of
the guitars I mean I mean a majority of the guitars in the guitar market around
the world and not only that Martin has been at seasoning wood for a very long
time in terms of how they take the wood how they Mill the wood how they uh Kiln
the wood when it's necessary how they put in the acclimation room and you know and how they aerated and all that stuff
so um in some respects there's Mojo in a
Martin guitar if those if that same Tree in that same wood would have been sold
to another company um it would not
end up sounding the same because because everybody uh
is responsible for how they they kill the you know how they season their wood so you can say that everybody in there
from the person who who put on the Fret markers that in a way their Mojo is in there and um but certainly the owner of
the guitar um and I'll just end by saying I coined the the phrase the Dead Man's note which
is the a string at the ninth fret I believe is the deadest sounding note on
a new guitar but and I've done this with recordings that if you play it and you
really do Reverb you know you do the vibrato with it and and you play it it improves and more and more you get
resonant frequencies coming out of the body of the guitar and after a year or two that note sounds much more resonant
than the day you first started playing that guitar and I think there's also a
phenomenon where it seems to be they seem to be deterring on long-scale dovetail next joint guitars I believe
when uh when they play those notes on makers of bolt on neck guitars it's a
phenomenal thing because it doesn't seem to happen uh the same way that dead man's note isn't so dead on Bald on that
guitars and why that would be I don't know but that goes back to the mess of the dovetail neck joint
um the fact that old that old-fashioned carpentry that creates a dovetail neck joint is in some ways
I won't say inferior but it's imperfect and I think when I talk about those wavering Martin that you know notes that
kind of waver in harmonics that waver in and out and go slightly Out Of Tune here and there is in some people's minds of
imperfection where in my mind that's why I love Martin so much and that's why every Martin has its own unique
personality even of two hd28s sound almost identical they'll never sound
truly identical Mojo baby next question this one should
be quick we're hot on the heels of the winter finally being over I hope I really hope cold temperatures are behind
us for good this next one is pretty polarizing you can go anywhere on Facebook or the guitar forums and pick a
side and you will have people with you you must wait 24 hours to open the box
in cold temperatures when you buy a guitar online myth or truth I can't wait
to say my part could I go first please go right ahead this is its truth
I cannot believe how many people are so insistent on proclaiming that you don't
have to wait it's like there's so many people in a hurry to run through the internet and tell you that you spent 3
500 bucks of your own money and you're being told by someone else you shouldn't wait tear open the box that whole thing
is a myth and I'm probably coming from the point of view that they think we
when I say we it's it's the dealer it comes from the manufacturer I'm speaking about Blue Ridge and Martin guitars
specifically but I'm I know it happens across other brands the dealers are taking their advice from the
manufacturers who built these guitars in climate controlled environments that are putting finishes on the guitar that are
going to react differently when when a guitar gets really cold really fast and then really warm really quickly the
Finish reacts at a different speed compared to the wood and I'm walking into the science of it right now but
there's a reason the manufacturer tells the dealer to tell the customer if you're going to get
this guitar shipped it's going to leave a climate controlled Music Store where the temperature was about 70 degrees the
humidity was 45 percent it's going to take a trip even if it's two or three states away even if it's not that cold
when you get it it might have become cold at some part of that journey and the safe thing to do is just let it
acclimate in the box for a whole 24 hour period before you open it to avoid the risk and the opportunity of something
going wrong with the Finish it's a prevention what do they say it's an ounce of prevention is better than a
pound of cure this podcast isn't long enough for me to give you guys the floor to explain to me why you should let
someone tell you don't bother with that it's nonsense just rip open the box I guess I don't necessarily have a problem
with people who don't know if it's important or not but I have a problem with people that are convinced it can't
be a problem and they try to tell people you'd be a fool to wait 24 hours to open that box that's how I feel about that
and I don't mean to upset anybody but that drives me bananas how do you feel spoon
well and I sit here and and think about the wealth of knowledge and advice you
can get from the internet um and the wealth of of ignorance and
and Hoover's and bad advice you can get on the internet you know it's it's you
have to uh you have to remember who it is that's telling you and and what they might know about it and the dealer would
certainly know more it's entirely possible that guitars that have a polyurethane finish may have far fewer
problems uh in that circumstance than something made with a traditional lacquer well Martins are made with
traditional lacquer whether it's a catalyzed lacquer or in the nitrocellular slacker and those
definitely can suffer the uh the slings
and arrows of weather and humidity changes finish checking that's what
people call those tiny tiny tiny micro cracks on vintage guitars those are
caused almost always by what we're talking about and they might may not necessarily cause
problems with your guitar but and some people claim that's one of the reasons old guitars sound as good as they do
because they finish is now all has those micro cracks and so the guitar breathes even more to go back to Mary's comment
about the satin finish allowing a guitar to breathe more um
but you can also crack the wood and you can also The Binding can also come loose
and the um you know all kinds of things can happen and
um you know wood usually cracks because it was weaker than whatever else was
expanding people know the old pickguard cracks from the shrinking nitrate pick
guards that used to be under the finish and all those little things that you
have to be careful about so why not follow the advice of the person who sold
you this expensive guitar and just let it acclimate in your home
you know that's not a rhetorical question we'd love to hear the people's comments the YouTube version of this podcast to try to defend the uh to not
doing this um but good luck because because uh B4
wand that we've busted the myth that you don't have to worry about your guitar
acclimating if it was shipped to you or even driven across country you know last
thing you want to do is put your guitars in your trunk of your car uh you know particularly in cold weather you can the
same issue will happen the same thing can happen if a guitar it gets really cold in a car over a long journey and
then you bring it into a warm house and just let it sit there and warm up you know Let it wait till the wait till the
case comes up to room temperature before you open it same sort of thing yep and I want to be open-minded and
mature about it if I'm wrong holla at me in the comments I'll read everyone and I'll reply I promise next question
buying a new guitar in the box is better than buying a floor model and when I say this you see that video sometimes on the
social media where somebody plays a guitar in a store and I'm not talking about Mary's music Somebody plays in a
big box store and they play the guitar and they know they like it go get me one from the back I want one that has been unplayed my argument with that is that's
a myth for two reasons the first reason is if you finally have a guitar in your lap and you love it and you played the
one that you know you like I think that's a luxury some people don't have and if you have the opportunity maybe
just say hey I've bonded with this this is great I want to take it home but even more so
some people sort of have a stigma about the guitar that's in the back room in a box that's never been touched that one's
better more often than not and I'm not just saying this as as a dig and it's it's not there's no underlying grievance
that I have with Martin or Blue Ridge I'm a Martin dealer and I'm a Blue Ridge dealer and most of the instruments we
get new in the box and I'm making my air quotes we take everything out of the box inspect it closely photograph it put it
back in the box there are many many times that the guitars need a little bit of attention
whether it's a setup whether it's a small scratch a small imperfection what you want is to buy the guitar that's
back in the back room that's been inspected before and not abused so if
you find that that's the Holy Grail but what you don't want is the guitar that
Martin put in a box some dealer received it at the dock put it in the stock room nobody knows what's in that box until
you buy it you don't want to be the first one to open that box and inspect it you want a guitar that's been
inspected and not played by a million people and that's not the same thing as new in the box it's it's something that
goes around the internet pretty often and that's my take on it I don't know spoon if that's something you really have a lot of experience with but I
think it's a myth for somebody to want a guitar that nobody's seen well I well I think it's I think your
point is totally valid that um that first of all somebody in final inspection played it because they have
to string them up and play them and make sure they're in intonation is all correct and all that but
um but yes the you definitely want them inspected by somebody who knows what they're doing uh like at Mars music of
course uh if you're playing in the uh if you're lucky enough to get to the Martin Factory and get to play guitars that are
on the wall in the visitor center or back in the picking parlor where they have the better guitars on the wall you
can buy those if you love them you can just say I'd like to buy this one my dealers Mario's music and they'll just
call them Ari and arrange that sale and one advantage you get by that is not just the fact that that um
that you got to buy at the Martin Factory but that you found a guitar that you fell in love with and it was that
actual guitar my experience in the 1990s when I would frequent in the early 2009
frequent uh Mandolin Brothers on Staten Island which was basically like being in a guitar Museum where you could play all
these amazing vintage and new guitars but they would you know and other dealers would be willing to if you
really like the one on the wall they would bring you one or two more from from downstairs so you could play them
and um but the times that I witnessed that most people kept the one that was on the
wall and I believe that's because a couple of reasons one I believe that
Spruce tops uh particularly Sitka Spruce has to wake up you know if it's been
sitting for a long time guitars kind of can sound kind of dead at first and they really you really need to get that top
moving and get to get the sound out of it now that's a myth into itself but from my experience I find that at least
maybe it's a trick your mind and your ears play on you but I believe that's part of it but also that one in the in
the shop that's been on the wall has been played by people so it's already had some playing in and and I think
that's by and large uh one of the reasons people like them so much as opposed to the guitar that is just you
know it's maybe gone through inspection but nothing else and and it just doesn't
have any but anybody's Mojo in it yet so if that's what you want if you want to
be only your mojo then by all means but if you uh but I would say if you find a
guitar in a shop that um that you like um
you better have a good reason not to buy it and um sure I've been in guitar
stores whereas things have been cracked and clearly somebody's dropped it and you know that's that's a different
matter altogether but but some but I also have seen people who say oh it's got a scratch on it uh yeah it's
like I don't care I love how it sounds you know um and we you know we've we've met we've
fallen in love so it was love at first here and um so it's now my dear and
we're going to stay together so I think maybe it comes down to the the person and the guitar but yes the last thing I
would want to do is have Martin ship me something that hasn't gone to my dealer
and my dealer hasn't made sure that it didn't need any a tiny bit of fret work or it didn't need the neck Rod adjusted
a little bit or you know you know things settle um over that first week and uh and
certainly if it's been in a UPS truck or something like that um then you know I would definitely want
it inspected by the person who sold it to me um so you know I don't have you know so
I can you know so I can say they can say and I can say that um that it got to the
shop and goods you know a good stead and is now in the best condition it needs to
be before it gets to me all right next question next myth truss rod adjustment and action height
myth you can use the truss rod to adjust your action I think I know what I'm going to say but
what do you think I'm going to say technically the answer is no that's not how you adjust action
um there's there's certain things that you can do that I think people use the
word action incorrectly you can adjust the truss rod to make certain problems
go away but it's not really adjusting the action which has to do with the height of the string in relation to the
Frets and the saddle and the nut speaking of nuts what is Maury rutch's answer
gosh all right I'll tell you here's the thing when you adjust the truss rod and when I
say that you use a truss rod wrench if you loosen the truss rod wrench you're removing some tension and allowing the
strings to have more relief and will define relief by if you would hold the G string down for example one finger at
the first fret use your other hand to hold it down at the 14th fret the amount of relief that
is in the neck if you use that string as a straight edge is variable so what you want to do is you want to have just
enough relief you don't want it to be dead flat but you want just enough relief for your playing style this is
sort of a Goldilocks thing some people like it a little bit hotter some people like it colder there's more than one
correct answer depending on playing style but there's a window of Tolerance you don't want way too much and you don't want none so use the truss rod
tool the truss rod wrench to add or subtract the amount of that relief when
you do that a side effect listen the side effect of that is going to change the action of the guitar so the strings
are going to raise and lower a little bit depending on if you're going to loosen or tighten the truss rod so that
leads some people to say I want my action to be a little bit taller I'm going to use the truss rod and it's kind
of like fixing the front wheels on your car and taking the bolts off the back wheels to do it so now you've got the
front wheels are nice and tight your back wheels fell off you're not you didn't fix anything you kind of went
around and about and I'm not poking fun at anybody unless you ask and you you know investigate the problem and figure
out what to do you can't know this unless somebody tells you so it's not a matter of ignorance but those people
that just go to the truss rod to achieve the action they want even those people that know it's not the right way to do
it what you need to realize is you're basically robbing from Peter to pay Paul
you're you solved the action height as a Band-Aid but you've actually given
yourself only say this one you've actually changed the relief in the neck so if you needed to do both that's the
only caveat here if you needed to change the truss rod with the truss rod wrench
to arrive at the correct relief and the side effect is action you like that's not what I'm talking about that's
actually correct but don't use the truss rod wrench to manipulate the relief in
the neck just to arrive at an action height you like because if you end up with the action height you like and
you've disrupted the correct amount of neck relief you're going in a circle so that's that's not a really long thing to
talk about but it's it's a myth I wanted to bust it let me know in the comments if you'd like to take a truss rod wrench
and throw it right at my face I I don't mean to upset anybody but that's where I stand on that subject and I feel like
I've been taught from some really really knowledgeable people on the sub object and that's that's the truss rod myth
busted in QuickTime so let me ask you this how do you change the action for
somebody when you're really going in to raise the action or lower the action the correct way to do it is at the
Saddle so if you need a higher action you really do need to take that saddle out at least put a quality shim under it
which I don't recommend but it works the best thing to do is actually you know carve a slightly taller saddle if you
need the action lowered take your saddle out and lower at the bottom of the saddle sand the bottom of the saddle
against a really really clean piece of sandpaper on a on a dead flat surface and then put your saddle back in so you
want to take height away from we're at height to the saddle to change our action
you heard it here first and last folks
next that was an easy one the next one's probably tied back to what you talked about a few moments ago myth you must
play the guitar before you buy it in person if you find any 10 Martins two are going to be great two are going to
be dogs and the rest are just going to be average myth or truth
I think uh modern guitars are are more consistent now guitar to guitar
within a given model than they've ever been ever I would never be more I would never felt more secure about
ordering a guitar online than I do now when it comes to Martin guitars in the
standard series 16 series The Nazareth made instruments um
I mean that's just that's just the way it is sure and people people like the idea people love the the fairy tale
romance idea of what we just talked about earlier going into a shop and playing a guitar and falling in love with it and walking out with that guitar
um but a lot of people don't have the opportunity to do that first of all without driving miles and miles and
miles and miles and miles in some cases to get a chance to play Martin guitars and they have many options online uh
Mars music or whoever their favorite dealer is uh is you know there and available and I don't really I don't
know anybody uh personally that ordered a Martin
guitar from a dealer from you know one of the main models or or one of the
limited editions and and got a lemon from ordering it online
I just don't I just never met anybody who's been able to say that was the case
yeah and I should probably be more deliberate about my my busting this myth there might be somebody who did play ten
Martins in a store and found that to be true but to go back and perpetuate the legend of let's put this online so
people share it and share it and I think sometimes we can be guilty of seeing something online so many times and two
or three people said it so this it's got to be true you might find some people do feel like that and then if you get the
right 10 people to say I feel like that too well knobs did all all of those people actually do this test and if you
find a group of people that literally go and try to find 10 HD 28s in one store
and ensure that the strings are all alive that the setup is okay that some
of those guitars weren't used you find 10 brand new HD 28s and you know that
there's no variable in as far as how how much life is left in the strings and find out that you know six or stinkers
only two were very good and there are two that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy I just think it's too easy to keep
recycling some of the things some people see and until I find out someone's done
a test where they can back it up I don't believe in that at all except for isolated cases I might be able to play
three triple o eighteens after this program and I'll tell you what those three triple low 18s feel like to me in my
first impressions then I'd put them away and come back to them tomorrow I'd be wrong to tell people online later this
week that you got to watch out for triple low 18s because any three you play one of them is way better than the other two well in my opinion these three
that one time you just be careful of what you see out there I do think that's a myth that could be busted maybe I'll
say there's some truth to it in some cases but it wouldn't be every time for sure well yeah so there's certainly hyperbole
in saying 10 as if as if anybody you know goes someplace that has 10 HD 28s
even in the you know Glory it is in the early Century you know late 20th century when when you could go into shops that
would have lots of Martin's they never had 10 standing on the wall with the same model but that just goes to the exaggeration of this whole idea because
it's right up there with the people who think they were their first person to ever think that I bet these computer
virus protection companies are actually making all the viruses to keep them in business you know it's just a it's just
a a very shallow logic and a cynicism that invades
um the internet really and but I went you know I would say this let's just say that that existed 10 hd28s in the same
shop and one person went in and made that decision if 10 people went into that shop
all of them would have picked a different best guitar and all of them
would have picked the guitar that that was you know they dismissed right away and they would have been different
guitars because there's different people with different ears um probably on different days and like
you already brought up the difference in the strings and all that I did you know they and nowadays they are so similar
that it might come down more to looks that somebody likes the looks of the
sides on this one more than that one but when it comes down to looks I always
tell people to buy guitars with their ears and their hands not their eyes and um
and so yeah I'm 100 with you that if somebody wants to only buy a guitar
that they get to play in a shop they have more power to them that that they should go on the internet and basically
demand that everybody else do that and you're an idiot if you don't do that says much more about them than it does
the guitars or the people that are uh they're talking to all right spoon the next myth when the
music starts the podcast is almost over true or false that would be true
alas we've come to the end or should I say the middle we have so much more to talk about here I think it would be a
myth if I would tell you we're not going to come back with part two of this episode stay tuned and be sure to follow
us we'll be back at you next Monday with part two of myths and truths and a lot
of that stuff on the list comes from spoon's point of view I can't wait to hear what spoon thinks is a myth when it
comes to acoustic guitars well also I'd like to encourage listeners uh anybody listening to this
if you're on the YouTube version of this if you want to put in the comments other Martin myths you'd like us to explore or
perhaps send an email to Maury's music and what is that address Mario
support marismusic.com with your Martin myth that you would
like explored very good and I'll take this opportunity to ask you guys if you've enjoyed this
program we'd love it if you would share this podcast with just one person keep the ball rolling get the word out there
and any support you could give us we genuinely appreciate it from all of us
at mori's music thanks for listening bust your myths later [Music]
this has been a presentation of maury's Music your trusted source for Martin and Blue Ridge guitars
find Us online at maurysmusic.com [Music]
