I agree, I played one 12 years ago an it was one of the best D18 I ever heard.. Some (few) 1963 D18 sound virtually like a 1940's D18.

lol, it aint the strings

@@Iamnickdude09 I didn’t see him claim it was.

HD35. Low and highs due to the 3 piece back.

@@mommar394he didn’t ask “what is the worst guitar Martin ever made”.

Volume. J45s sound great, but not alot of volume.

It actually stems back to the tragic saga between Gibson and some coal miners back before the war. A coal miner who was a remarkably gifted musician and actually came up with a lot of the type of bluegrass stuff we hear today, was discovered by a very wealthy north eastern elite while driving through coal country and encountering travel problems. the elite convinced the coal miner to play and sing at a big fancy function that was going to happen the next month. The coal miner invited his family and friends and they spent their entire savings to get to the function having been offered reimbursement by the elite. However, as they soon found out, the miner was only invited to play as a mockery to country folk and the elite abandoned his promise to pay for their trip. To make things worse, after the humiliation the elite put the coal miner through, and the people becoming stranded with no way to travel home, he stole the miner's music and profited greatly off of it soon after. the miner had to sell his prized guitar, a Martin that was gifted to him by a generous doctor a few years prior (an entirely different, yet inspirational story). after that event, the coal miner and his family vowed to make sure everyone that played their people's music would never associate with the name of that elite. the elite's name, Stuart Gibson. The coal miner assumed this was the same gibson as the guitar company. Gibson started suffering a loss in guitar sales. the Gibson guitar company got word and tried to kill the miners and frame it as a mining accident. luckily for the miners, the person Gibson hired to carry out the plans was a corporate spy from Martin and warned them (which is the real reason pre war martins are highly sought after). the vow to disown gibson ran deep and the story of why was largely forgotten. yet to today, bluegrass players simply refuse to play gibsons and stick mostly to martin....

@@bjornegan6421 No wonder the "story" is unknown... sounds like too much story.

@@bjornegan6421 Must have been quite an evening around the campfire to concoct this story - an entertaining yarn though so credit where it's due