[Mountain Fever]

I have played both...never in the same place at the same time.

To my ears, the Gibson(s) just sounds different...not worse, just different. To try and explain...think of all the sounds a guitar can make as a 1-10, with one being boomy bass and 10 being ice-pick treble. Both might have the same amount of range, but to me the Gibsons tend to range between 3 and 7 and the Martins between maybe 4.5 and 8.5 in the case of the HD-28V and maybe 4 and 7.5 in the case of the HD-28VS.

For whatever reason, I tend to gravitate towards brighter rather than darker unless it gets tinny sounding. The HD-28V is right on the edge of that for me and the HD-28VS sounded just about perfect to my ears.

My struggle has been do I really want the much bigger body? The 000-28V may be what I end up with. Very balanced and somewhat easier to play IMHO.

Interestingly, my favorite artist of pretty much forever, Jackson Browne uses various incarnations of Gibsons and his acoustic songs sound just great. He does use more open tunings than I ever would, and I really don't know how much more that might make the guitar 'sing' a bit with some ringing open strings.

Not sure how you could go wrong with any of them.

In the FWIW column...I had a chance to play a Bourgois Slope Dread last week and thought it sounded better than either the Martin or the Gibson.