Martin Guitar model 2-24 c.1845

This guitar was made by C.F Martin in around 1845-1850 and has be restored beautifully by historical instrument specialist Ian Watchorn. While it represents an important time in C.F Martin’s history it also gives you a real sense of where he was heading.

The guitar is an X-braced model 2-24 and is housed in it’s original coffin case. It is virtually identical to the Martin & Cooper guitar shown on page 20 of Gruhn & Carter’s “Acoustic Guitars”.

A 2 piece belly of pine with an early form of scalloped X-bracing. Back and sides of highly figured Rio rosewood, cedar neck. The headstock is spliced onto the neck not carved from the same piece. The nut is original of nickel silver. a common feature on instruments from the period. The center joint repaired below the bridge, 2 minor cracks in the back and the frets are original as is the case.

It has a warm power tone with a perfect neck and action.

A very similar guitar made headlines for all the wrong reasons on a film set in 2015.

A mix-up on set meant that Kurt Russell ended up destroying an 1870s parlor guitar on loan direct from the Martin Museum while filming Tarantino’s  The Hateful Eight.

Kurt Russell’s character, the bounty hunter John Ruth, snatched the instrument from Jennifer Jason Leigh’s  hands, declaring “music time is over”, then proceeded to smash it into a wooden pillar. The reaction you see from Leigh is genuine. See how she looks away from Russell, presumably to a roomful of crew members, as she processes the guitar’s destruction?  She had no idea it was coming. What she did know, though, was that the guitar she had been playing was a priceless Martin, on loan from the Martin Guitar Museum, which hailed from the 1870s. Martin announced quickly that they would never loan a guitar for a movie ever again.