1965 Martin 000-18

From the listing

Seller's description

A lovely 1965 Martin 000-18, offering the classic spruce and mahogany Martin voice in a comfortable, beautifully balanced 000 body size. The 000-18 has long been one of Martin’s great understated models, pairing a spruce top with mahogany back and sides for a clear, dry and articulate tone. It is a wonderfully versatile instrument: smaller and more waisted than a dreadnought, but still with plenty of projection and headroom when played with a little more intent. Overall this is a very clean example, with a beautiful tight-grained spruce top, mahogany back and sides, tortoiseshell body binding to the front and back, an unbound fingerboard with dot markers, the correct tortoiseshell pickguard, and correct Grover Sta-Tite tuners. As is common with these, there is a top crack from pickguard shrinkage. The neck is really comfortable, measuring 43.3mm at the nut, with a depth of 21.1mm at the 1st fret and 24.8mm at the 10th. The original frets and nut remain, it's had a compensated saddle fitted, and intonation is good. The saddle height is currently around 1mm. The action is playable as it stands, though the guitar would benefit from a neck reset in the future, which we can arrange if the buyer would like. Tonally, this is exactly the kind of sound you hope for from a good ’60s 000-18: it has a clarity and warmth, with excellent note separation and a lovely dry mahogany character. It works beautifully for fingerstyle, strumming and more nuanced playing, with that direct, vintage mahogany growl when you dig in. A very nice example all round, and a guitar that is difficult to put down! Comes with a non-original hard shell case.