“Is this the best guitar I've ever played? Including the ones in your museum? I believe so”: Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt teams up with Martin to create a new signature acoustic that blends traditional style with a key, ultra-modern twist

Last year, Swedish metal guitar hero Mikael Åkerfeldt – along with his Opeth bandmate, Fredrik Åkesson – visited the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Much to their delight – Åkerfeldt went so far as to call the museum “the Holy Land” – the two guitarists were given free rein to take even the museum's most valuable acoustic guitars for a spin.

Though he wasn't particularly impressed by the Kurt Cobain-owned 1953 D-18 that the Nirvana frontman affectionally called “Grandpa” (not to be confused with the $6 million D-18E Cobain used for Nirvana's legendary MTV Unplugged performance), there was one 19th century model that was so pristine Åkerfeldt was scared to play it.

Never mind all that, though.

Today (September 26), at the Guitar Summit in Mannheim, Germany, Martin unveiled the OM Mikael Åkerfeldt, a luxurious, limited-edition stunner of a signature guitar. Those historic models Åkerfeldt tried that day, he says, pale in comparison to his and Martin's new creation.

“Is this the best guitar I've ever played? Including the ones in your museum? I believe so,” he said in a press release. “It just sings – the resonance, the clarity, the low end. Everything about it feels magnificent.”

Luckily for us, our very own Matt Owen happens to be at the Guitar Summit, and stopped by Martin's booth to snap some up-close pictures of the new model.

The new acoustic is all luxury from top to bottom: a torrefied spruce top with a Guatemalan rosewood back, an East Indian rosewood wedge, European flamed maple binding, and a herringbone trim.

The fingerboard is ebony, there are Liquidmetal bridge pins, and, man, peep those mother-of-pearl Roman numeral inlays.

Moving to the interior, one finds VTS-treated spruce and Golden Era scalloped X-bracing, a lá Martin's Modern Deluxe Series.

But the guitar's calling card is its speed-friendly Low Profile Velocity neck, which marks the first time the modern-minded neck – found on the company's much-lauded SC line – has been fitted onto a traditional Martin body. There's where the metal comes into play, eh?

In commemoration of Åkerfeldt's year of birth, 1974, the OM Mikael Åkerfeldt Signature will be limited to a run of 74 models worldwide, with each coming with a laser-etched stainless-steel label and custom Harptone case. It rings up at $6,999.

For more info on the guitar, visit Martin.