“It’s a little bit of an odd duck, but it is cool and I would love to use it for recording. It would be a monster in the studio”: Decoding the mysteries of the 1967 Martin D-35S with the slotted headstock

This Martin is very much a product of the folk era, with its slope-shouldered dreadnought body and 12th-fret neck join. The model designation is D-35S, with the S designating the slotted headstock that differentiates it from a regular D-35 dreadnought.

The defining feature of both D-35 models is a rosewood back made from three pieces, rather than Martin’s usual two.

By the late 1960s, harvesting and export bans on Brazilian rosewood were making it increasingly expensive and hard to source, so Martin devised the three-piece back so they could use up remaining scraps of Brazilian rosewood that were too small for OM, 000 and dreadnought bodies. This one is fairly typical because the centre section is darker than the bookmatched sides.

Based on the visual appearance and the lines per inch, I would say this top is Sitka spruce, rather than red Adirondack. Another thing I find interesting about this model is that the neck is wider than a regular D-28 or D-35. It’s a very large neck with a rounded profile that hits the sweet spot between typical nylon- and steel-string necks.

The design is fairly basic with five-ply plastic binding, a very simple rosette, dotted white plastic pins and unbranded three-on-a-tree tuners that are probably Grovers. At some point it went back to Martin for a neck reset, refret and a new black pickguard, and we have all the paperwork from the previous owner.

A lot of people aren’t crazy about Martin guitars of this era, but there are good and bad ones and this D-35S happens to be an exceptional playing and sounding instrument. It takes a few minutes to get used to the wider string spacing, but you can play light fingerstyle or hit it really hard with a pick and it responds equally well.

I think that around the mid-1960s the quality of materials available to guitar companies was going downhill and most of the major guitar companies were struggling to meet demand. They were also facing tough competition from overseas guitar manufacturers and they had to cut costs and corners.

Martin always had a way of introducing new models to make them more affordable. Examples might include the mahogany-topped guitars of the Depression era and the Style 21s that were less expensive to make than the herringbone-bound Style 28s and could therefore be sold to less affluent customers who really couldn’t afford an extra 10 bucks.

You can see differences in the thickness of Martin tops as the 60s progressed, and the grain wasn’t as tight on the later ones. Of course, players could hear the differences, too, and they didn’t feel the newer guitars sounded as good as those Martin made during its heyday. Everybody has their own ideas about when that heyday actually was, but nobody would argue that it was the mid-1960s onwards.

The D-35S actually harked back to the very earliest dreadnoughts that Martin first made for the Ditson music stores back in 1916. The model was also revived as a limited-run custom order for Wurlitzer between 1962 and 1968 and it was called the D-28W. Martin began offering 12-fret dreadnoughts, in Styles 18, 28 and 35, during 1967 and produced them for seven years.

Despite the retro looks, the D-35S doesn’t have pre-war style forward bracing and the construction doesn’t really differ from the regular D-35. I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling the slot-headed models were reintroduced to use up Martin’s stocks of classical necks because the nylon-string guitars were no longer selling.

They would have shaved them down to make them more suitable for steel-string players, but they’re basically the same necks.

I don’t usually like regular D-35 guitars, probably because the backs are dampened by the additional bracing and they don’t hold a candle to D-28s. But this one is huge sounding with almost piano-esque undertones coming from the back, and it sounds better than any other late-60s Martin I’ve ever played.

It’s a little bit of an odd duck, but it is cool and I would love to use it for recording. It would be a monster in the studio and I think it would come across really well.

I’m surprised it has stayed in the shop as long as it has because it is priced very fairly. I think people are maybe put off by the 12th-fret body join, when in reality most acoustic players don’t really need those two extra frets anyway.

• Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York / 001 (516) 221-0563
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.