When digital watches first appeared on the market in the '70s, some people discovered you could change an entry level model into a deluxe model just by taking off the back and fiddling with the circuitry. It was cheaper for the manufacturer to ship the same product with some features disabled than to design separate circuit boards. (Or maybe this story is apocryphal; I've never known anyone personally to do a mod like this.)
Either way, I've long had a fantasy that there was some simple change I could make to my D-17 (hybrid x-bracing and M/T neck) to make it as responsive as a standard series guitar. After all, it's a solid-wood Martin dread. Why shouldn't it perform as just well?
I've come to wonder if the 16/17 Series aren't made intentionally stiffer just to protect the market value of the Standard Series guitars. The materials themselves aren't cheap enough to warrant a thousand-dollar price drop, and while the M/T neck and modified bracing scheme may save labor time on the factory floor, I have a hard time seeing this impacting per-unit cost so dramatically.
If Martin released a D-18 with a micarta bridge and fingerboard and M/T neck, but with forward-shifted scalloped x bracing, and you could buy it at Sweetwater for $1,500, I have to believe their traditional D-18 sales would plummet. Which leads me to think that the hybrid bracing is intentionally inferior. These guitars sound just good enough to be worth the money, but anyone with a sensitive that knows what an 18 or 28 can do will never be fully satisfied with them.
This theory also leads me to believe that Martin thought one step ahead of the home-modder. If you could just pull out the popsicle out or shave some wood off the tone bars to put the guitar into D-28 retro territory, word would get out. I suspect the A and hybrid X bracing are unmoddable by design.
Or, maybe, the official story is accurate, and it's all about accommodating the cheaper-to-produce M/T necks, which can't be paired with traditional x bracing without risking the structural integrity of the top. That's all above my pay grade, but I do think it's worth noting that I've never heard of a 16/17 series mod that improved voicing, and I have looked for one.
Having said all that, putting in a bone saddle and switching to aluminum bronze strings has made an impressive enough difference to my D-17 that I don't hesitate to perform or record with it. And I don't plan on ever getting rid of it.
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