Bridge

In the fall of 1967, C.F. Martin & Company started circulating an ad that said, “Martin dreadnought guitars feature a very rich tone often copied but never equalled. A Martin guitar is always superior in tone.” But within two years, the company quietly made changes that would undermine the very quality of sound it so confidently boasted. The late 1960s and early ’70s were a period of significant change and mounting pressure for Martin as material shortages and increasing demand forced the company to adapt. The Washington Post Magazine editor Marion Clark highlighted some of those challenges in a 1969 article discussing the scarcity of Brazilian rosewood. “A few years ago, when the Brazilian government embargoed the rosewood which the family has always used for the body of its guitars, the Martins bought up all the rosewood logs they could get out before the embargo went into effect,” wrote Clark. “They had to pay 70 cents a pound for the wood in log form, with each log weighing one to two tons.” This change was significant, and though most players didn’t notice, luthiers recognized a distinct difference between Brazilian and East Indian rosewood. In his 1973 book Guitar Repair: A Manual of Repair for Guitars and Fretted Instruments, Irving Sloane noted “…it is particularly important to collect and store Brazilian rosewood. Recent restrictions on the export of rosewood logs by the Brazilian government have forced guitar manufacturers to switch their production to East Indian rosewood, which is different in both color and density. Guitars of quality manufacture and almost all custom-made guitars have until recently been made of Brazilian rosewood. For many years, at least, a considerable portion of repair work will involve rosewood guitars, so wood for splints and patches must be stockpiled.” Within this framework of external pressures and company responses, on April 9, 1968, Martin began replacing maple bridge plates with Brazilian rosewood – a harder, oilier wood with very different acoustic properties. By ’69, the company had dramatically increased the size of the plates and transitioned to Indian rosewood. This was part of a shift aimed at increasing production to meet surging demand while also seeking to ensure the structural integrity of its instruments. In the face of these changes, did Martin’s craftsmanship remain consistent, or was there an early indication of a dip in build or sonic quality? Martin historian Mike Longworth, who began working at the company in ’68, offered perspective on these shifts in a 2000 interview with Vintage Guitar. Until early ’69, he said, the only thing the company used maple for was to make bridge plates, but then it “…went to the larger rosewood bridge plate [because it suddenly] had a large amount of rosewood.” Beyond alterations to materials and design, Martin faced substantial operational challenges including a rapid expansion of its workforce, as Clark observed while describing the production pressures. “The Martin family has been handcrafting guitars for 134 years,” she wrote. “The business, started by Christian F. Martin, Sr., has been handed down through four generations. Today, business has gotten too good for the Martin boys (there are two) to handle alone. A few years ago they were faced with a three-year backlog of orders. So they’ve trained 200 craftsmen to help. Nevertheless, stores must still place orders for Martin guitars at least a year in advance.” Longworth didn’t see any problem with this change, saying, “It wasn’t poor workmanship or quality control. Martin was expanding. When they hired a new person, they didn’t turn them loose on the floor until they were ready to do their job right.” But Clark’s observation of Martin’s growth in the late ’60s suggests this period may have marked the beginning of a strain on quality control. The need to train 200 new craftsmen to alleviate a three-year backlog points to a possible compressed training timeline, which increases the potential for production mistakes and worker dissatisfaction. In the intricate craft of guitar making, where precision is paramount, a sudden influx of relatively inexperienced hands could lead to inconsistencies in construction and a departure from the company’s established standards. This pressure within Martin, symptomatic of the broader economic unease of the Malaise Era, likely contributed to the overt issues that surfaced later in the decade. The Malaise Era was a period characterized by economic challenges and labor unrest across American manufacturing, rooted in well-publicized struggles in Detroit. Just as the auto industry saw strikes and declining productivity, Martin also faced labor strife. In November of ’77, local paper The Morning Call published an article on the strike by 195 Martin workers who were members of the United Cement, Lime and Gypsum Workers International Union Local 552. At that point, the strike had been going for 73 days, with no resolution in sight. According to the paper, workers felt they were being “punished for unionizing” in May of that year, which was the first time in Martin’s 144-year history that the workers had engaged in collective organization. Company President Frank Martin denied this, explaining that the reason the workers were not receiving an improved pension plan and vacation pay was that the company had not shown a profit in three years. After eight months, workers returned to the line, quietly resigning from the union out of loyalty to the company and Christian Frederick Martin, III. But the strike was not an isolated event; it was likely both a symptom of underlying issues within Martin and a cause of further disruption and potential impact on quality. Even in this environment, in 1976, management saw an opportunity in the increasing prices of pre-war Martins and started offering the HD-28 for 25 percent more than a D-28, which had a small maple bridge plate, scalloped top bracing, herringbone top border, and “zipper” backstrip. This economic context, however, is only part of the story. Martin’s decisions during this period also deserve a closer look, particularly regarding their impact on the guitars. While Longworth offered insight on Martin’s internal reasoning during a time of upheaval, his perspective is increasingly challenged by today’s luthiers, who point to tonal degradation linked to these very decisions – especially the adoption of oversized rosewood bridge plates. For modern repair experts, these changes are not just historical footnotes – they can literally be tone killers. But was there a method to Martin’s madness? Ted Woodford, a luthier whose repair and restoration of vintage guitars has garnered him a substantial Youtube following, offers a critical assessment of the instruments produced during the ’70s in a recent video, “’70s Martins’ shameful secret.” Echoing the earlier discussion, Woodford describes the period as a time when Martin faced a host of serious problems. “It’s a true low point for the company in almost every respect. They’d grown too big too quickly [and] were on the cusp of bankruptcy because they were buying up little companies all around the world… They lost the plot,” he said about Martin’s financially ruinous acquisitions that included Vega Banjo Works, Fibes Drum Company, and A.B. Herman Carlson Levin Company. “And unfortunately, it shows up in the instruments.” The resulting turmoil and financial pressure, according to Woodford, directly influenced the design changes. “I think a bit of dread started to rise in the management around the idea of warranty repair work,” he added. “Martin always had that wonderful ‘We’ll fix it’ policy, but that came from a time when they were making 1,500 guitars a year versus the ’70s they were up to around 25,000. And the repair room started to get pretty full. So the bracing design started moving into larger and larger extremes. The bridge plate became three times the size compared to their golden era.” Building on his description of overbuilding and cost-cutting measures, Woodford reveals a truly baffling and fundamental flaw that plagued Martin production during the latter half of the ’70s. “Almost incomprehensibly, they started installing bridges in the wrong location. And it was not a one- or two-time mistake. This was built into their assembly process from 1976 into ’78,” said Woodford. “Someone didn’t measure right. It’s almost as if they looked at a plan then mixed up the lines for the saddle and the front edge of the bridge, built it into a jig, and never noticed the guitars were seriously out of tune. People are still asking $4,000 for them, but here’s the thing: you can get used to being out of tune in some contexts. Still, it’s not a selling point.” Luthiers have faced significant challenges attempting to rectify this error. “Unfortunately, fixing the issue is a cosmetic nightmare because the bridge has got to move, so there’s going to be fresh wood that has to be made to be given a patina,” Woodford said of the recent repair of a ’70s D-28. Shifting his focus to the rosewood bridge plate, Woodford noted the evidence of pristine-looking pinholes – a testament to the structural integrity of the change – came with unintended consequences. “Can we attribute that to using rosewood rather than maple for the plate? Probably. Maple is 1,400 on the Janka hardness scale. Rosewoods are all over 2,000 – much harder. Does that make rosewood a better choice? Maybe, because it’s also much stiffer. Does that improve the sound, or impair it?” asks Woodford. “You’ll never get a straight answer.” But it wasn’t just the large quantity of rosewood cited by Longworth, its quality was also a concern. At the 2023 Fretboard Summit in Chicago, repairman T.J. Thompson, who had been removing bridge plates from ’70s Martins for years before becoming a specialist in pre-war models, said, “I found the bulk of the Indian rosewood plates were either quarter-sawn, which in almost every case will quickly split through the pin holes, or flat-sawn, which doesn’t have much strength. This is one of the reasons I took [them] out. It was throwaway [rosewood]. And once I’d removed it, I saw that it was obviously too flexible to be useful as a bridge plate.” Thompson suggested that a higher-grade rosewood would likely yield a better tonal outcome. “You could put in a nice piece of Brazilian rosewood or maple, and you’re way more likely to get the response that the client was hoping for,” Thompson said in a session with fellow luthier Mark Stutman from Folkway Music. “But not that Indian stuff that they had in there. It was just awful.” Beyond the mere shift in bridge plate material from maple to rosewood, the poor quality of the rosewood combined with the plate’s increased size is widely considered to have a detrimental effect on a guitar’s tone. Referencing Stutman’s revealing a consistent pattern of thinner wood near the bridge, Woodford also believes the size of components created significant sonic and structural issues. “Mark made a video about these plates and the idea of removing them to put in a more-vintage size and material might not be a great idea,” said Woodford. “Lots of people have tried it over the years.” One of those people is Bryan Kimsey, who built a cottage industry around improving the tonal limitations of ’70s and ’80s Martins by replacing the bridge plates. Favoring more-resonant maple and dimensions closer to vintage Martins, the delicate operation is a key element in his work. Acknowledging the inherent risks in such elective surgery, Kimsey views the replacement of the bridge plates as a worthwhile endeavor that demonstrably alters the tonal characteristics of the instrument, though not to everyone’s preference. “I have been able to A/B a control guitar with a test guitar many times,” he said. “My experience is that replacing a large plate results in a snappier sound with a quicker attack and quicker decay. While I like this for flatpicking – where too much sustain can get in the way – not everyone does. Some people like the richer sustain of a large plate.” Expanding on the specifics of his work, Kimsey clarifies that while “smaller” is the operative word, the wood is carefully considered to subtly shape the guitar’s tonal characteristics, with the realistic understanding that the goal isn’t to replicate the sound of a pre-war instrument. “While maple is a common replacement and was traditionally used in small-plate Martins, I don’t always use it,” Kimsey adds. “I also use black locust and ‘hot’ rosewoods – basically anything but Indian – depending on the sound we’re after. My goal in modifying a ’70s D is not to turn it into a ’30s D, but to keep its essence of a focused, punchy midrange while letting the guitar be more of what it can be. To this end, I sometimes use a small rosewood plate as a nod to the late ’60s, when Martin used small Brazilian rosewood plates. Using a small rosewood plate will give the guitar a slightly more powerful, thicker bass. Maple will lean to a crisper and lighter sound. Black locust splits the difference. These are small changes but they can fine-tune toward your goal.” Kimsey emphasizes that the bridge plate replacement is rarely an isolated modification, but rather one crucial element in a comprehensive package of adjustments aimed at optimizing overall tone and responsiveness of ’70s Martins. “I also swap Grover Rotomatics for lighter open-back tuners, remove the popsicle braces and replace with a trapezoid, scallop X braces in different configurations, scoot the bridge back to correct intonation, cut a long saddle slot, slot the bridge and use non-slotted pins, do a neck re-set with my tricks there, and swap Micarta for bone.” Stutman’s early enthusiasm for bridge-plate replacement eventually gave way to caution as he began to see structural issues in guitars that had undergone the procedure. “I did it many times,” he said. “But when those early conversions started coming back with top bulges and separated X braces, I was tipped off to it not being a good idea. I bought a Hacklinger gauge to measure top thickness and it all became quite clear. I now measure top thickness on every guitar that’s on my bench, before starting any repairs.” Woodford offers a possible reason for this pattern. “The idea about accidentally thinning the top over and around the larger bridge plate was actually raised by former Martin museum director/historian Dick Boak,” he said about an exchange at the Fretboard Summit during which Boak dismissed the idea that Martin might have intentionally thinned the tops to make up for the bigger plate. “Boak suggested that the stiffer plate behaved differently under the pressure of the stroke sander used on tops. This area is more resilient and doesn’t deflect as much under the sander, so it was sanded thinner. He didn’t have faith in the ’mystical guitar Jedi knowledge’ idea.” However, Stutman offers clarification on the extent of this thinning, stating that his own measurements reveal ’70s Martin tops are consistently thinner everywhere, not just in the area of the bridge plate. With experience being the best teacher, Stutman has learned examining the widespread thinning of these tops is a critical factor to consider before undertaking significant modifications. “It’s a bad idea to take those plates out or put scallop braces in these guitars, as their tops are not up to the challenge,” says Stutman. “I feel strongly that those rosewood plates are keeping the tops from distorting under string tension. “Do I agree that a smaller maple plate will make a ’70s Martin sound better? Of course, I do. But I still don’t advise that it be done in most cases, or in any case where the guitar’s top measures .105″ around the bridge.” In contrast, Kimsey offers perspective grounded in long-term success he has witnessed. “The proof for me is that ’70s guitars that I’ve overhauled are going on 20-plus years and I’m not aware of any issues. I have seen a few with some belly bulge, but for me that’s the sign of a top that’s not overbuilt,” he says. “A belly is only a problem if it’s a problem, and I don’t see a slight belly after 20-plus years as a problem. I’ve seen equal bellies on stock ’50s guitars with the extreme rear X braces and that is the sturdiest bracing Martin has ever made.” Martin reverted to maple bridge plates in 1988, but didn’t decrease their size in all models until 1990. This measured response suggests the company was resistant to rapid design changes, even when it involved a return to tradition. However, this change did not fully resolve disagreement within the guitar-making community. Despite the evidence and experience shared by luthiers on both sides the debate remains, ultimately hinging on individual comfort levels. “My bottom line is that if a person isn’t comfortable with a modification, then don’t do it,” says Kimsey. “If you buy a modified ’70s Martin with a smaller plate and you’re uncomfortable with it, remove it and put a big plate back in.” – Cliff Hall This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.