Martin Custom HD-28 with VTS Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar Natural
Model: 10CMGCFG0061
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One of Martin's best-selling models, the standard HD-28 includes many of the options guitar players and collectors prize in historic Martins like a Sitka spruce top with East Indian rosewood back and sides all wrapped in classic herringbone inlay, a low profile neck shape, HD zig-zag purfling, dovetail neck joint, and a three-ring rosette. But what separates this Custom HD-28 from it's brethren and other similar acoustics, is Martin's uniques Vintage Tone System based on a torrefaction process.The Martin VTS works in conjunction with Martinâs skilled luthiers almost like a time machine. Martinâs team can target a decade in time and closely mimic key tonal properties for the top and braces of that era based on the observed changes a woodâs cellular structure will experience over time. This focused method helps Martin to re-create not only the pleasing aesthetics of an old guitar, but more importantly to reproduce the amazing tones previously reserved only for prized vintage instruments.The Back StoryAs you walk into the Martin Guitar Museum in Nazareth, PA, one quickly gets a sense of the history and the reverence those vintage instruments deserve. The first thing you want to do is play one and you quickly realize how precious they really are. Why are they so special? Well there are many opinions, but several terms start to rise to the top of the list as you ask more and more people the same question. âLook," "Feel," and "Toneâ are the consistent responses from the players in the group and âhistory and traditionâ from those who appreciate the contributions Martin guitars have played throughout the acoustic guitar development history.With such a great array of original vintage Martin guitars at their disposal, they began to discuss ways that they could more closely capture that vintage tone in a new guitar without actually having customers needing to sell their homes to purchase an old vintage Martin. âCapturing that sweet vintage toneâ is guaranteed to happen if you simply purchase a new Martin and allow it to age naturally. This method is always the no risk/sure-fire way to own a piece of American guitar history and the tone will continually sweeten throughout its life. But in todayâs world, waiting is a trait most could use a bit more of.This desire to own a vintage Martin without having to take out a 2nd mortgage compelled Martin to focus on ways to improve stability and tone. In the case of tone, you never really find it as much as you are always searching for something better. Sound is subjective and every musician tends to favor things a bit differently than others. However, itâs fairly agreeable amongst players that a 1937 D-28 has a special tone they all like. That two-year search led Martin down an interesting and enlightening path.VTSMartin VTS (Vintage Tone System) is a process developed in-house which has its foundations in the very old torrefaction process. Torrefaction is a thermochemical treatment of wood at very high temperatures. It is carried out under atmospheric pressure and in the absence of oxygen. During the process, water contained in the wood is released, and the biopolymers (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin) decompose, leaving behind the remaining solid, dry, and much more stable material wood. While natural aging is different, there are many similarities between the two and the end results are similar as well.They have used the industry standard torrefaction process in several guitars during the past few years and those programs yielded very positive results in enhanced tone and stability. If you look closely at wood under a microscope which has been through a torrefaction process and compare it to wood that has only been conventionally dried, you see differences in the cell structure. They took a âpreviously destroyedâ vintage Martin guitar top from their 1937 archives and began to compare its cell structure to wood that had been through the standard torrefaction process. There were significant differences, but they had more work to do in order to âmimicâ cell structure from that particular time period.These revelations led Martin to closely inspect a guitar top from a 107-year-old Martin and compare it to the torrefied tops they had run under the standard process. To their surprise, the similarities were astonishing. As they looked closer, they realized they had stumbled upon a way to reproduce some of the key properties that contribute to how an old guitar sounds vs. when itâs compared to a brand new guitar.Looking to fully exploit the potential of this process, they focused their efforts on modifying the industry-wide torrefaction process so that they could not only change the color hue impact of torrefaction, but also capture several key properties that impact tone to better home in on the properties of the 107-year top they used to benchmark. They found that they could get results consistently matching 200-plus-year-old guitar tops with the standard torrefaction method. While this made Martin very happy and the guitars sounded great, they really wanted to see just how far they could push the advantages of torrefaction to an earlier time period.The VTS process for soundboards and bracing came from analyzing tops from key decades throughout Martinâs history and developing a new torrefaction process to more closely match the time periods and properties of the samples. These developments gradually progressed during a two-year period until they hit upon the perfect combination of tone, stability, color, and cell structure. They began to test and verify until the process allowed Martin to closely replicate the cellular structure of tops and braces to within a selected time period. In other words, they could closely replicate key properties of a top, for example, from the 1930âs-1940âs or from the mid-1800s. They could do this in incremental time periods from 50 to as much as 200 years! Being able to target a historical era and infuse key properties of an actual vintage top led Martin to focus this project initially on their Authentic program, as well as some other special instruments youâll find only at Musicianâs Friendâs Private Reserve. These instruments target the instruments from years that were groundbreaking at that time or have since been adopted by musicians as âholy grailâ instruments.These innovations will allow Martin to select guitars from their very exclusive collection at the Martin Museum and reproduce those models and their respective characteristics that make them sound so great. They do not believe that one-size-fits-all. Each guitar deserves to be reproduced accurately, not only in specifications and materials, but in tone as well. Being able to purchase a new Martin that embodies that vintage tone for the respective time period can instantly give Martin players a tone normally reserved for those rare, unobtainable vintage guitars.
- Body
- Body type: Dreadnought
- Cutaway: Non-cutaway
- Top wood: Solid Sitka
- Back & sides: Solid East Indian Rosewood
- Bracing pattern: Sitka, Scalloped 5/16"
- Body finish: Gloss
- Orientation: Right handed
- Neck
- Neck shape: Low profile
- Nut width: 1.68" (42.67mm)
- Fingerboard: Black Ebony
- Neck wood: Genuine Mahogany
- Scale length: 25.4"
- Number of frets: 20
- Neck finish: Satin
- Electronics
- Pickup/preamp: No
- Brand: Not applicable
- Configuration: Not applicable
- Preamp EQ: Not applicable
- Feedback filter: Not applicable
- Tuner: Not applicable
- Other
- Headstock overlay: None
- Tuning machines: Grover Chrome
- Bridge: Ebony
- Saddle & nut: Compensated Bone
- Number of strings: 6-string
- Special features: VTS
- Case: Hardshell case
- Accessories: Info not available
- Country of origin: United States