1949 Martin D-28 featuring a Sitka spruce top and straight-grained Brazilian rosewood back and sides in excellent player grade vintage condition including its original hardshell case. This is a tremendous guitar with prodigious volume and a wealth of vintage charm. It's opened up nicely over the decades - the notes just tumble effortlessly out of it - and it has all the headroom you could ask for with its rear-shifted tapered X-bracing. This dread is a little less scooped sounding than Martin's modern rosewood offerings, with a beautiful ripened woody midrange that is only earned through countless hours of play. The mahogany neck is a comfortable oval shape with medium depth and a 1-11/16" nut. An absolute joy to play with action measuring 6/64" amd 4/64" from the 12th fret to the bottom of the low and high strings, respectively, with .007" relief and a proper neck angle with healthy saddle exposure over the surface of the bridge. General cosmetic wear includes small scrapes and dings here and there with ubiquitous lacquer checking in the non-original finish. This guitar has had a recent re-fret and every note plays cleanly up the board with no flat spots, divots, or other evidence of wear in the wire.
Repairs and modifications include a neck reset and full re-fret, a full refinish including a re-staining of the neck, a replacement oversized ebony bridge w/ drop in saddle, a replacement rosewood bridge plate, replacement pickguard, a glued crack on the treble side lower bout, a glued crack about 5 inches along the center of the back, replacement tuning machines, and a small plugged hole where a strap button had previously been installed in the neck block. All repairs appear to have been performed competently and have been determined to be stable by our technicians. This treasure is fully dialed in and ready to go. Includes what appears to be the original case in fair condition, with areas of peeling tolex and a rope handle.
- 1949
- Sitka spruce top
- Brazilian rosewood back and sides
- Mahogany neck w/ ebony fretboard
- Dot fingerboard position marker inlays
- White plastic binding
- 1-11/16" nut width
- 25.4" scale length
- Rear-shifted tapered X-bracing
- Full refinish
- Replacement Grover Rotomatic tuning machines
- Replacement Ebony bridge
- Replacement rosewood bridge plate
