Chris Thomas of Martin Guitars recently visited Guitar World's office in New York City.
Accompanying him were four new Martin models -- the 00-DB Jeff Tweedy, the new D-18, the GPCPA4 Siris and a Custom Shop CS28-12 -- which we checked out at the 2012 NAMM show in January.
Here's a photo gallery of three of the models (Sorry -- I completely missed the Custom Shop CS28-12), all of which were played by Guitar World's Paul Riario, who appears in a few photos, and me (I appear in no photos).
Let it be known that these were some seriously fine guitars; all of them were beautiful, bright, rich and exceedingly fun to play; we didn't want them to leave the building. Riario agrees that all the models were incredible and definitely deserve a test drive.
My personal favorite (Riario's too, for that matter) was the limited-edition Jeff Tweedy model, which will be built for only two years. I honestly didn't think I'd like a traditional 14-fret 00-size guitar, but it pretty much played itself and had a very full sound.
The tension was perfectly balanced up and down the neck, enabling fingers to fly on this thing. The modified-V-shape, long-scale neck (25.4 inches) certainly didn't hurt. The inside label on each of these guitars is signed by Tweedy -- the Wilco frontman -- and numbered in sequence.
So check out the photo gallery below -- and keep an eye out for Riario's review of the the GPCPA4 Siris in an upcoming issue of Guitar World and a related video on GuitarWorld.com.
For more about Martin Guitars, visit their recently redesigned website.
Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World.
