Guitar World Verdict
With the Maple GPE Inception Martin offers something new, compelling and powerful – and if it speaks to you, you’ll find yourself in possession of a real thoroughbred.
Pros
- +
Silky sustain and warm clarity.
- +
Powerful, detailed voice.
- +
Classic non-cutaway styling.
- +
Rewards confident playing.
Cons
- -
A serious investment for a new design.
- -
Modern voice won’t suit everyone.
- -
Might not hold value like a classic model.
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What is it?
Tradition can be a gilded cage for guitar companies with a long and famous history, such as Martin. On the one hand, Martin’s original D-28 is, to this day, most people’s mental template for what an acoustic guitar should sound and look like.
But historic brands like Martin can’t just keep on selling the past to players who are already deeply invested in the heritage. They have to innovate, attract new players and persuade people that they are still a growing, evolving force in guitar making.
To Martin’s credit, it's made careful but persistent efforts to do just that over the years – notably with the offset-bodied, exceptionally playable SC Series. But the more recent Inception series of guitars has a poise, polish and maturity that challenges high-end modern makers such as Lowden at their own game.
This GPE model is the first non-cutaway guitar to appear in the Inception series, which debuted at NAMM in 2024, and the choice of maple as the main material for the guitar’s body is central to the whole design mission behind the range.
Specs
- Launch price: $4,199 / £4,349 / €5,399
- Made: USA
- Type: Non-cutaway electro-acoustic
- Body: Maple and black walnut
- Neck: black walnut
- Fingerboard / Radius: Ebony / 16-inch
- Scale length: 25.4 inch
- Nut/width: 1 ¾-inch (44.45mm)
- Frets: 20
- Hardware: Open-gear gold tuners
- Electrics: LR Baggs Anthem pickup system
- Weight: 4.56lbs / 2.07kg
- Left-handed options: Yes
- Finishes: Amber Fade Sunburst
- Case/gig bag: Molded hardshell
- Contact: Martin Guitar
Build quality
Build quality rating: ★★★★★
With tropical hardwoods such as mahogany and rosewood in dwindling supply, Martin wanted to take a second look at maple – a sustainable northern species – but design a guitar from scratch to get round some of its traditional limitations as a tonewood.
Martin’s Fred Greene described the challenge like this: “Maple can sound a bit stiff. You get a strong, quick fundamental note… and then it decays quickly and you just don’t get a lot of nuanced overtones over the top of that.”
Martin’s solution to those issues was to introduce a beautiful curved, wedge-shaped panel of black walnut (another sustainable tonewood) to the back of its Inception guitars, to lend a softening effect to the overall sound. The real innovation takes place beneath the European spruce top, however.
To voice the maple body to deliver more subtlety and richness, Martin used what it calls ‘skeletonized X-bracing’ to support the soundboard. Essentially, instead of the solid, scalloped bars of wood we might normally expect under the top of an acoustic guitar, this skeletonized bracing has a honeycomb structure that offers huge strength while reducing deadening weight.
Additionally, Martin has cut ‘tone channels’ into key areas of the underside of the soundboard. These shallow grooves allow the most resonant areas of the top to vibrate more freely, further reducing the ‘stiffening’ influence of that maple body on the guitar’s voice. That’s the broad idea, anyway.
On the new GPE Inception Maple model, these core features have been combined with a black walnut neck, meeting the body at the 14th fret with a 25.4-inch-scale and a fairly shallow, slender profile Martin calls a GE Modified Low Oval.
The fingerboard itself is FSC-certified ebony, as is the Sloped Modern Belly bridge, which features bone bridge pins, in-keeping with the guitar’s sustainability theme.
The maple body itself is attractively flamed, the rich, rippling patterns of the wood just visible beneath the smoky Amber Fade Sunburst finish – a typically understated Martin touch, similar in intent (I assume) to Taylor’s maple-bodied 600 Series guitars, which also featured warm cognac-toned finishes to trick the mind into not thinking ‘bright sounding’ when you see maple.
Playability
Playability rating: ★★★★½
Picking the guitar up, I'm struck by how nicely rolled-in the fingerboard edges feel.
Combined with the satin finish on the neck, it’s an immediately engaging tactile experience and the 1 ¾-inch (44.45mm) nut width invites easy fingerstyle playing without feeling a stretch for strummers.
And that’s just as well, because the GPE Inception Maple has a really potent voice when strummed – it doesn’t collapse when hit hard but instead yields a focused, harmonically rich sound that could be a great asset in the studio for modern country or rock tracks.
Switching to fingerstyle, you have to admire how Martin has extended the strong initial attack of maple into a silk-smooth sustain with crisp harmonic detail.
Sounds
Sounds rating: ★★★★½
The overall impression is of elegant strength – this is not a warm, woody 60s folk-club kind of guitar. It’s a guitar to play bold, beautiful celtic or Appalachian melodies on, with a carrying, harp-like quality that would really suit eloquent but spirited players from the school of Martin Simpson or Tommy Emmanuel.
It also has plenty of well-defined low end, too, something that’s sometimes just a tad lacking in Taylor’s V-Class-braced guitars of comparable size, such as their Grand Auditorium models.
It also has plenty of well-defined low end, too, something that’s sometimes just a tad lacking in Taylor’s V-Class-braced guitars of comparable size.
Verdict
The guitar also features an LR Baggs Anthem acoustic guitar pickup system – combining an internal mic with an undersaddle pickup – and I like how Martin has kept the input separate from the endpin, avoiding an outsize button to cram a strap eyelet over and allowing easy battery access in the same end-plate.
Amplified, this guitar is thrilling to play and the combination of playability, poise and articulate power means you can really immerse yourself in plugged-in performance
Plugging in to my Trace Elliott acoustic amp, the value of the guitar’s punch, composure and drive really shines through. Amplified, this guitar is thrilling to play and the combination of playability, poise and articulate power means you can really immerse yourself in plugged-in performance.
Guitar World verdict: Anyone buying a high end guitar knows it’s often a game of diminishing returns. But with the Maple GPE Inception Martin offers something new, compelling and powerful – and if it speaks to you, you’ll find yourself in possession of a real thoroughbred.
Test | Results | Score |
|---|---|---|
Build quality | Impeccable lutherie that embodies thoughtful, coherent concepts for evolving the state of the art in acoustic guitar design. | ★★★★★ |
Playability |
The GPE Inception Maple has, despite its non-cutaway design, very pleasant, tactile ergonomics, easy modern playability and a comfortable weight despite its maple construction. | ★★★★½ |
Sounds |
The GPE Inception Maple grants confident, articulate players exceptional power, sustain and harmonic coherence – it may not be so well suited to warm, woody folk styles however. | ★★★★½ |
Overall |
With the GPE Inception Maple, Martin has created a powerful vision of how the company can unite the time-proven quality of the brand with a more progressive sound and a sustainable agenda that doesn’t feel like a gimmick but a mature, integral design choice. It’s a strong new voice that won’t suit all but is a thrilling drive for confident players. | ★★★★½ |
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