Quote:
Originally Posted by L50EF15
Very nice. Pricey, but I don’t know that production costs will let them go much lower.
Of course, they allude to the Martin R and C series guitars with the reference to the 000 bodied archtops of the 1930s. This raises an interesting question: could Martin, given the economies of scale that goes with their size and sales, cost effectively reintroduce something like the R series?
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Given that a luthier-built-to-order-in-the-USA instrument can be had from Stephen Holst or Mark Campellone for about the same money - or a similarly-appointed all-solid/all-carved MIC Eastman AR805 16-incher for about half that (and a Loar LH-700 for even less) - I personally think they're seriously overplaying their hand for a Chinese-built guitar, but to each his own...
As to the Martin question, you may recall that in the early-2K's they dabbled a bit in the archtop market with the CF-1 - a joint effort with Dale Unger that never really caught on with either the hardcore Martin fans or the jazzers to whom it was presumably intended to appeal. That said, there have been some ongoing rumblings about shifting lower-line production to non-USA sources for a while now (see the comments on the new D-15E on the General Acoustic subforum); given the fact that there hasn't been a family tradition of hands-on lutherie for the last century, I wouldn't put it past the current powers-that-be in Nazareth to have a high-quality archtop or two built by one of the Chinese violin houses to R- or C-Series specs, and marketed under the Martin name - hopefully at a price competitive with its erstwhile competitors from Loar and Eastman...