Never had a Martin Custom Shop guitar that I didn't like
or wish I had it back because I foolishly traded it away!!
I think Custom Shop started in 1979.
Yup.
My brother bought a '79 custom D-28 that was notably better than any other 28 from the 1970s I ever played.
It was stamped D-28C, something neither of us had seen before, and no one knew what the C stood for.
He traded a 1970 D-28 and a pile o'cash for it, mostly to get rid of the 70; it was a real dud, but was one of the very last that had a Brazilian rosewood body. The 70's wood made it an especially pretty guitar, but it was nothing but a show-horse with no legs under it.
Unfortunately, he only had the D-28C for a few years. It was stolen out of his travel trailer when he was unloading the trailer after a road trip. He got some insurance money, but he still misses that guitar, as do I.
That era- 1970 to 1977- was one of Martin's worst. The company expanded drastically, purchasing the Vega banjo company and the Swedish Levin guitar works, and Martin attempted to get into the solid-body electric guitars in a serious way.
All of that expansion failed. The Levin workers were all highly unionized (like everything else in Sweden), while the Martin management was adamantly anti-union. The Levin guitars were intended to be Martin's equivalent to the Gibson/Epiphone marriage, but it never worked out.
Banjo buyers didn't want banjos that looked like Martin guitars. And their electric guitars cost the company a bundle and were a complete flop- real Edsel guitars.
Throughout, their standard line just suffered. Build quality went down, and Martin was riddled with domestic labor trouble. Around 1975, things had gotten so bad the management just shut everything down, fired their work force except for their crew leaders, sold off the Vega and Levin brands at a loss, and then rebuilt the company structure from the ground up. And produced next to nothing for around 18 months.
That 79 CS my bro owned was actually made by the small crew of the senior workers who stayed with the company. They were all made on the production line on the factory floor, but the production was so small they were pretty much custom-made with a lot of careful hand work.
They were all better than the previous years' guitars, but I don't think any were lots better than the guitars Marin makes today on the production line. 1979 was the year the company learned how to combine their modern methods to their traditional methods of craft.
Their dealers had to be shown the company could still make guitars that were worth the cost of stocking them. Their troubles had caused many of their best retail outlets to abandon the brand, but the 1979 products got most of the best stores back to the franchise.
By 1979, with a new member of the Martin family at the lead, Martin re-made itself what it is today.
Their standard guitars from the 1970s had been cranked out in large numbers, and though they were all quite poor in comparison to the company's traditional quality, they sold very well and steadily. The Martin tradition was enough to sell them, and their sales kept the company alive just long enough they could keep from going bankrupt.
The 1970s were very rough on Martin in every way possible. The demand for their products was so high throughout the previous 20 years the company had invested in a huge new facility, and all their expansion efforts totally collapsed and killed their cash flow.
It was a very rare recovery in the guitar business. Almost all the other makers who skated that razor edge tipped over and went under.
Gibson, Gretsch, Fender, Kay, Harmony, Regal, and others all went bust and were sold for a fraction of their worth in the 1970s. The entire American guitar industry failed.
I think the only reason why Martin, Guild and Rickenbacker survived intact was because they were all either small or dedicated to one type of guitar. And all of them were run by guitar guys who knew the business so well anyone could walk out of the office and go put on a production apron when that was needed.
What's even more rare is Martin's recovery came in 1980, and they raised the prices of all their products spectacularly high at a time when the entire guitar industry went into general failure in the disco era, but still managed to maintain a good profit level.
They didn't make very many guitars from 1980 to ca.1985 compared to their numbers from the 1970s, but they sold them all quickly and steadily improved their products as time went along.
Going big just doesn't seem to work when it comes to making guitars.. Guitar manufacture contradicts the prevailing American corporate philosophy.
regards,
stanger
