Why you should buy a Martin D-45 dreadnought acoustic

Something I don't do often is talk about expensive guitars. The Martin D-45 dreadnought acoustic is a very expensive guitar. Is it worth it to buy one? Yes it is.

Before I get into why it's worth it, there are certain guitar brands where if I had the money, I would put down the cash to buy and not think twice about it. Brands like Gretsch, G&L, Epiphone (as in the upper-end Epiphone like the Broadway model), and so on. I may talk about those brands later. But for now I'm talking about Martin.

When people talk about "the D", they're usually talking about a Martin D-45.

What makes the D so special? What is it about the D that's so desirable?

The best way I can describe a D is that it is "the sound" of what a natural acoustic is supposed to sound like. It more or less defined the country-and-western acoustic tone, and later on defined the acoustic you hear on any movie soundtrack that's worth listening to that features an acoustic guitar.

The D is a gentleman's guitar. It is not something meant to be played nor even touched by pimple-faced metalhead kids that don't understand what a D is all about. To appreciate a D takes a man who understands the value of a properly made acoustic that just sings whenever you play it.

Do you have to be an expert player to wield a D? Not at all, and that's part of the beauty of it. The size and shape feels 100% comfortable, and the sound projection makes anything you play on it sound amazing, even if it's just your standard campfire song style chords.

As a collector's piece...

As a collector's piece, a D appreciates in value very quickly. If there was ever a no-brainer investment instrument, the D is literally a can't-go-wrong purchase. If you buy one today, it's pretty much guaranteed it will be worth more in the future. A lot more.

What does owning a D say about you?

It says you've arrived. You've saved up your money and want something that's a real show-stopper of a guitar. That's the D.

Proper guitar players know how to spot a D instantly. It's not a flashy guitar, nor is it meant to be. The D is simply a 100% proper acoustic, front to back, top to bottom.

There are very few guitars where I say "whoa" when I see one. The D-45 is one of them.

Why is a D-45 so expensive?

Mainly because it's made just like Martin used to make them in the pre-war era.

You've heard the old saying "they don't build 'em like they used to". Well, Martin does build D-45s exactly like they used to, very much on purpose so it's as authentic as they could possibly construct them. That's a good thing.

As crazy as this sounds, I honestly don't believe the price is too high for it. I think it is appropriately priced for what it is.

Some guitars are priced way too high for what they are. But not the D-45. You will get exactly what you expect from it, which is a perfect-playing, perfect-sounding acoustic guitar.

Is the D-45 good for stage?

No. The D is meant to be privately owned and appreciated that way.

If you want a proper acoustic stage guitar, the Yamaha A-Series is the much better choice. Looks great, has a proper electric-acoustic setup with modeling, and gets the job done in fine style. Great for stage.

If on the other hand you want cheap-and-good, again, it's Yamaha with their APX500II model. Not as good or ritzy-looking as the A-Series, but gets the job done nicely.

Now if you wanted a Martin acoustic that's proper for stage use, that would be the D-35. That one can withstand stage environments a whole lot better.

"Why buy an expensive D-45 if I can't play it on stage?"

If you asked yourself this, you're missing the point of owning a D in the first place.

Owning a D-45 is not about bringing it on stage and performing with it. It is about owning one of the best proper acoustic guitars money can buy.

There are men out there who get to a point in life where they want to buy "that one really good guitar" and have the money to spend, but honestly don't know what guitar to spend it on. You would be surprised how often this happens.

For those men out there that want a gentleman's guitar where you really get what you pay for, you want a D-45. If you've got the money, get one now, because you only live once.

'dookie' from green day turns 20, and the 1990s sucked

Dookie was released on 1 February 1994, so yes, that means the album is officially 20 years old...

...but that doesn't mean it was anything special, because it wasn't. The album was nothing but 1970s "pop punk" wrapped in a 1990s flavor. This is not to say the album was bad, because it wasn't. It is, just like I said, not anything special.

The 1990s for the most part sucked. I know because I lived through it.

From a musician's point of view, there is one very important thing to know about the '90s. It was the last decade of The Old World way of "making it" as a musician.

I'll talk more about that in a moment.

Popular music of the '90s wasn't good. Remember, we're talking about the decade where the most popular music was from Michael Bolton, Wilson Philips, Ace of Base, Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Ricky Martin to name a few.

And oh yeah, the stupid Macarena. That was a '90s thing. A lot of people forget that one. On purpose.

1990s style was... bad.

You can really see this in a very-'90s movie, Clerks. Half the guys I knew back in the '90s looked like the Dante and Randal characters.

The big thing at the time however was "looking garage". To achieve that look you wore flannel, combined that with ripped jeans, torn-up sneakers or boots, let your hair get greasy, and yeah, that was pretty much it. I distinctly remember people questioning why the look-like-a-bum-who-lives-in-a-garage look was the in thing back then. Nobody ever quite found out why.

To look garage for girls, it basically meant to look like a girly dude. Instead of the big hair of the 80s, flatten it down to the skull, put some bad coloring in there, don't wear makeup at all, wear anything denim to make your ass look like a sofa cushion, show no curves at all.

Looking garage was basically an excuse for everyone not to care what they looked like at all, and that's why it was embraced so much. It was okay to look like a lazy bum then because it was, strangely enough, a legitimate style.

From the musician's point of view...

The '90s was the last decade of The Old World way of "making it", or trying to. This basically meant you had to get your band together, spend a ton of money getting a CD recorded, spend a ton of money getting those CDs replicated, getting an agent, playing gigs wherever you could and whoring yourself out to any record label that would listen to you in the hopes you would "get signed" and become a paid act.

In the late '90s however, internet killed all that.

People found out about file sharing as a way to get music for free, and did. Nobody wanted to pay for CDs anymore, and didn't.

There are guys who used to be in bands in the '90s that to this day are still bitter about what happened when internet file sharing hit the scene. It's totally understandable, because some bands spent thousands if not tens of thousands on recording and disc duplication, only to end up with boxes of CDs that nobody wanted to buy because they'd rather download it for free off the internet.

Guitar stores and guitar companies were not prepared for the sudden interest in vintage

Nobody saw this one coming.

It was in the '90s that a bunch of guitar players developed a sudden interest in vintage Fender guitars. Yes, Fender specifically.

When people saw Kurt Cobain playing his Jaguar or Mustang, most players had never even seen one before. Or if they did, they never paid any mind to it because it was a "dorky" guitar. Well, now all of a sudden it wasn't dorky because Nirvana was on top of the charts.

Other grunge bands brought back huge interest in the Stratocaster. While the Strat never truly died out at any point in time, there was a sudden surge of interest in them because all those grunge dudes broke out their old Strats from the '60s and '70s.

This completely blindsided the guitar companies and stores because all of them were committed to making and selling only the latest and greatest stuff - but now nobody wanted any of it.

Several guitar companies folded because of this, as did many guitar stores. Imagine having $25,000 worth of stock and nobody to sell it to. That happened a lot because many companies and stores just couldn't adapt, and ended up going out of business.

What do I pine for from the '90s, if anything?

I really struggle to think of anything that I miss from the '90s. To me, that decade just seems like a span of time where nothing really significant happened, except for internet of course.

I'm not saying the decade was bad, but more like blah. It was just kinda.. there. And then it was over. Well, not without mass-wide Y2K hysteria right at the end (what a joke that was).

The only thing I can say I truly miss about the '90s is that it was still cheap to live in America during that time. Even though the country was whacked with a recession early in the decade, gas was still cheap and the cost of living was still relatively affordable even in the tiny town I was living in.

I don't particularly remember anyone really complaining about how much things cost in the '90s. The jobs were there, the wages decent and the cost of living was something manageable.

The big thing is that I don't remember anyone being afraid, as in afraid of what the future might bring. Today, my generation has absolutely no idea what's going on anymore. In the '90s, we had an idea of what to expect in the future. But now? Nobody has a clue. But it's not our fault. Like I said, we had an idea of what to expect. But all that changed. For the worse.

And the real scary part? The younger generation expects us to fix the messes with this country that we didn't even cause.

Well, won't that be an interesting project, eh?

The '90s, while boring and blah for the most part, were at least stable, predictable and you knew what to expect, somewhat. At least that somewhat was better than having no clue what's going on, which is the case today.

Even though the '90s sucked, it's a suck that many wish would come back because boring, plain and stable is a lot easier to deal with than the wild, unpredictable and unstable crapola we deal with now.

don't be a hoarder

Those who have been following me a while know I've been through a few guitars since 2010. Quite a few of them, actually.

But how many guitars do I actually keep? Not many. Right now I have six, with four in working condition. The working axes are the 2010 Squier Bullet Strat, 2012 Squier Jazzmaster, 1989 Squier II Stratocaster and 2005 Yamaha RBX170 bass guitar. The two inoperable guitars that are literally in pieces are the 1993 American Standard Stratocaster and the 2012 Squier Bullet HH.

I don't play the '89 Squier II. That one is just kept in a case and stored away because it is my very first guitar, and that's the reason I keep it.

As for the '93 Strat, that was an 18th birthday present from my late father, which is why I still have it. I will at some point buy another neck for it since the existing one has a popped truss rod and is therefore unplayable. But being that's not a high priority, it can wait.

The guitar I absolutely don't need and will eventually sell off in parts is the Bullet HH. Why haven't I yet? Laziness. But I will get rid of it somewhere down the line and decrease my guitar stable from 6 to 5.

As for every other guitar you have ever seen me own either in photos or in video, those are all gone. Every one of them. They were either sold or traded out.

The two guitars I play regularly are the Jazzmaster and the bass. And you can't even count the bass as being played regularly because I only use that when I need to lay down a bass track. Otherwise it sits on the stand and routinely gets a layer of dust on it from not being used. But being it does serve a purpose for when I do require bass tracks to be played, I keep it for that reason.

A lot of guys hoard guitars

Guitar hoarders all say the same thing. "I'm a collector." And of course they will talk about how they're "investing" in certain guitars, even though most guitars hold next to nothing for resale value.

Over a period of a few years, that guy, the guitar hoarder, will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 25 guitars. And out of that stable, maybe 3 to 5 will be in good, playable condition. The rest will be all junk. Some will need new frets, or replacement electronics, or new tuners or new hardware, etc. There's always going to be something about that "investment" that's wrong with it.

A lot of guys hoard guitars in search of something they will never find

Big-time guitar hoarders will keep buying guitars thinking they'll find "the one" that will be the magical instrument with the "golden tone" and make them the player they always wanted to be.

That won't happen, because most of the time guitar hoarders keep buying the same guitar over and over again.

Take the Fender Stratocaster or the Gibson Les Paul for example. There are guys out there who own several if not many of these guitars. They just keep buying the same thing, over and over, but never seem to locate that one special Strat or Paul that really has what they're looking for. Close, but never on the mark, so to speak.

The reason why the hoarder is never able to acquire a guitar that's "just right" is because the guitar is simply not suited for them and never will be.

It takes a bit of explanation to describe what this means.

Let's say for the moment you hate strawberries. Always have and always will. Would you continue to buy strawberries until you found one that tasted good? Of course not. You'd stop eating strawberries and go eat another fruit instead.

Guitars are the same way. If a cheap version of a guitar doesn't feel right, the expensive version of that same guitar with the same shape will not feel any better. It might sound a little different, but it's still going to not feel right. And no matter how many times you keep buying the same guitar with the same shape over and over, it will never feel right.

I'll put this in even simpler terms.

If you've been buying Strat after Strat after Strat and can never find one that suits you, stop buying Strats. Try a Telecaster instead. Or maybe something different like a Squier Jaguar or Fender Marauder. Try something totally different than what you've been playing.

If you've been buying Les Paul after Les Paul after Les Paul and can never find one you really like, stop buying Les Pauls. Try a Flying V. Try an Epiphone Explorer. Maybe even try a semi-hollow like the Gibson ES-335 or the Epiphone Dot.

Stores like Guitar Center and Sam Ash have a 30-day money back guarantee. This means if you buy a guitar and don't like it for whatever reason, you can bring it back and get a refund. You can "try before you buy" by utilizing that store policy.

Having one guitar that perfectly suits you is a million times better than owning a bunch of guitars that don't

Guitar hoarders will keep buying the same guitar over and over and never find "the one."

Smarter players try different things until they find a shape and style of guitar that suits them just right.

I went through a lot of guitars in my search for "the one" that suits me best. And as it turns out, that happened to be the Jazzmaster. That guitar is something I wouldn't have even thought of touching before. But I saw one (a few, actually) in Sam Ash, tried it, bought it, and now it's the axe I play most because it's so unbelievably comfortable. For me, anyway.

If you're hoarding guitars now, sell the hoard. Just get rid of it, even if you sell at a loss. Get whatever you can for it and just unload all that crap out of your home.

After that, try new guitars you never would have thought of trying before. Chances are pretty good your "one" will be something totally different from what you're playing now. When you find it - and you will as long as you keep an open mind - you'll be a much happier player because the quest for "that guitar" will be over. Once you discover what really works for you, you'll be a much happier player.

it's okay to be a bedroom guitarist

There are a lot of kids across the world who got a guitar as a present for Christmas, many with the dreams of being the next big rock star.

A lot of these kids will eventually realize that trying to become a rock star is too much work, and that's it is better just to be a "bedroom guitarist" instead...

...and that is 100% okay.

It is way easier to be a bedroom guitarist compared to being in a band

Being in a band is cool because of the whole band vibe thing and being able to play in a group and all that. But being a bedroom guitar player is way easier.

When doing the bedroom guitar thing, you can record whatever you want, whenever you want, in any style you want and then post over to Bandcamp, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or all of those all at once. And you don't need anyone's permission to do it. You don't need approval of your other band members or any of that nonsense because it's just you doing your thing.

As far as how easy it can be, all you need is one guitar and an R8. The R8 has every single possible guitar effect you could think of, and built-in microphones that you can sing or yell into for vocal stuff. The R8 also has a basic drum machine in it too. When I say that all you need is one guitar and an R8, I mean that literally. Absolutely nothing else is required to record with. When finished with a recording session, just pop out the SD card or connect a USB cable, copy over the master WAV and upload wherever you want or place in a video.

Not in a band? That's okay

Funny but true: You will probably be much more of a success as a bedroom guitar player than you ever would be in a band.

It is totally possible to become internationally known just by posting one song to YouTube. All it takes is just getting the song done, putting it out there and see what happens. Maybe nothing will happen. Or maybe everything will happen. You won't know unless you try.

trying to get a strat tremolo to act like a jazzmaster/jaguar vibrato and failing at it

This is going to be a guitar-nerdy article, but if you're a Strat owner, you'll appreciate this information due to the fact that very few people actually know how to set up a Strat tremolo system correctly.

Three things to get out of the way up front.

First, yes I know Fender incorrectly calls the Stratocaster vibrato system a tremolo system. While they do call the Jazzmaster/Jaguar the proper name of being a vibrato system, on the Strat, Fender always refers to it as tremolo, so that's how I'm going to refer to it.

Second, I hate the modern two-point tremolo system and much prefer the older six-screw, and I'll explain why later as I describe this process.

Third, I don't have photos or video for this, but if you have a Strat be it Squier or Fender, this should be pretty easy to follow along.

I totally love the way the Jazzmaster vibrato system works. It holds tune very nicely, and I wanted to get my Strat to act the same way.

The end result is that yes, I was able to get a Strat tremolo to act like a Jazzmaster vibrato, but on the Strat it ended up being fairly useless and I had to go back to "decking" the tremolo system again because the guitar kept going out of tune. With a lot of work, I could have achieved stable tuning, and I'll describe that later, but I just didn't feel like putting the work into it.

The two reasons why a Strat tremolo will never be as good as one on a Jazzmaster/Jaguar

I'm stating this now so you know this before I describe the process.

On a Strat, the strings do not roll over anything after the string saddle before the nut. On the Jazz/Jag, the string rolls over a bridge separate from the vibrato, and this is a key component as to why the Jazz/Jag vibrato system works so well. Without that rolling point, the Strat constantly goes out of tune at the nut.

And to note, for proper Jazz/Jag vibrato to work, you are NOT supposed to stiffen the bridge in any way. It is supposed to be loose and rock slightly whenever the Jazz/Jag vibrato is used. All a stiffened bridge does is make strings break faster and makes strings go out of tune just like on a Strat when vibrato is used.

Second, the Strat tremolo arm is just too small. Yeah, I know, this sounds dumb, but that dinky arm a.k.a. "whammy bar" is too short to have any real control for slow bends and bends where you want to do flutter-style tremolo. The significantly larger Jazz/Jag vibrato arm on the other hand gives you much more control over bends. You can even do 1/4-semitone bends with no problem at all, which is basically impossible to do with a Strat tremolo arm because again, it's just too damned short.

First step: Bridge screws (setting up the float part 1)

Okay, so.. getting a Strat to do slow tremolo bends. Not an easy task no matter what kind of Strat it is.

The first step is setting up the bridge screws properly.

Detune all the strings so they're loose, or alternatively do this when all the strings are off.

Take off the back plate, loosen the tremolo claw screws, then take the claw springs out completely and set them aside for now.

Loosen all 6 bridge screws so they're sticking up. You don't have to take them all the way out, but you do have to loosen them quite a bit. You'll understand why in a moment.

Here comes the part where you'll probably get confused, but I'll explain it anyway.

Put your finger under the tremolo block and push up. You don't have to push hard. Just enough so that the bridge is sticking up to the point where it's against the bridge screw heads and can't be pushed any further.

A general rule of thumb is to make your bridge float at a maximum height of 1/8th of an inch. No, you don't have to be precise about it. Just take your best guess.

While pushing on the tremolo block to give it tension, tighten down the outer two bridge screws, as in the screws next to the 1 string and 6 string. When the angle of the bridge is around 1/8th of an inch away from the body, and both outer screws are at the same height as far as you can tell, then tighten down the remaining 4 bridge screws to equal height of the outer screws.

This is the point where I complain about the two-point tremolo system before continuing.

One would think that a two-point would be easier to do this with since there are only two screws instead of six. It's not easier. The screws are much more difficult to turn, requiring a larger tool to do it with, and it is really easy for the screwdriver to slip out and scrrraatttch, you just put a nice big, nasty scratch in your guitar body. This doesn't happen on 6-screw because the screws are smaller, easier to deal with and have a Philips head instead of slotted.

If you ever see a Strat that has a big scratch right next to the bridge, now you know exactly how it happened.

Seriously, Fender... slotted bridge screws? Really? Would it have been that much of an issue to put in nice big Philips head screws there? I guess so.

Anyway...

Right, so you've tightened down all six screws, and now when you push up on the tremolo block, the bridge only raises 1/8th of an inch above the body. The first step is complete.

Second step: Tremolo claw springs and claw screws (setting up the float part 2)

For proper control of the floating bridge, three claw springs are required. Every Squier and Fender comes with 3.

Would 5 make a difference? Not really. The only thing putting 5 springs on does is add in more tension and spring noise. Having 3 is fine.

If you have no idea how you should set up your springs, just put one on either side of the block, and the third one right in the middle.

Now comes the claw screws. For now, you tighten these, but just enough to hold the claw springs so they don't fall out. We'll come back to this later.

Third step: Tune to C#, adjust claw springs again

The reason you tune to C# is because you're going to be tightening the claw springs, which will pitch up all the strings.

Tune up to C#. Don't worry about being in perfect tune because you're about to put all your strings out-of-tune anyway.

Tighten or loosen the claw springs enough so that the bridge floats and doesn't touch the body.

After that, tune up all strings to standard E. The bridge may raise a bit when you do this. Or it may not.

What height should the float be when strings are tuned to standard E pitch? This is another answer you'll probably get confused by, but again, I'll explain it.

If you set your maximum possible float to 1/8th-inch, the float should rest at half that height, as in 1/16th-inch.

The reason for this? So you can bend in both directions, either up-pitch or down-pitch.

And the second reason is so you don't put any extra stress on the bridge screws. If you set your float to 1/8-inch and the bridge is floating at 1/8-inch, the bridge screws are literally being pulled, and that's bad. When the float is set to where it's not at maximum height, not only do you get up or down pitching, but the bridge screws don't have any extra stress placed on them.

Fourth step: Test tremolo system

Your strings are up to pitch, the bridge is floating and you're ready to rock at this point.

The first thing you'll notice is that it takes a lot less effort to bend strings with the tremolo bar now; this is normal.

The second thing you'll notice is your strings will probably go out-of-tune instantly, requiring you to re-stretch them a bunch of times until they stop going out-of-tune.

The third thing you'll notice is that if the strings go out-of-tune with a downward pitch of the tremolo, you can usually get them back in tune with a slight upward pitch (as in give a little jerk up on the tremolo bar and that will put the string back in tune... usually).

The pain-in-the-ass part is that you'll find that the tremolo system is either too loose for your playing style, too tight, has too much float, or not enough float.

Loose or tight is an easy fix, just adjust the claw springs.

Too much or too little float on the other hand requires you to detune all the strings and adjust the bridge screw heights - again.

Yeah. Fun, fun, fun.

Fifth step: Adjust your playing style and enjoy the "kinks"

Let's say for the moment you like using a Strat with a floating bridge. Well, you will have to change your playing style.

If you rest your picking hand on the bridge at all, you will have to stop doing that. Why? Because every time you do, the strings will pitch up slightly. You will have to learn not to rest your palm there anymore.

You will also notice that no matter what you do, your strings will make "kink" noises periodically when using the tremolo, especially on the unwound G, B and treble E strings. And no, using "nut sauce" will not cure this problem, nor will better tuners cure it, nor will different nut material, roller nut, etc. No matter what, you're gonna get the kinks and that's just the way it is.

The reason kinks happen is for the same reason I said above. After the string saddle, there is nothing for the strings to roll over. So what happens is that the strings slide in the nut slots at the other end of the neck instead. When you do that, it's kink, kink, kink.

The only way not to get kinking noises is to use the tremolo softly, and also have a very high float. As in greater than 1/8-inch (but not so much that your floating bridge is at some ridiculously high angle).

Worth doing?

Not for me it isn't.

If you want a vibrato system that's designed for those great-sounding slow bends, you have to use a Jazzmaster, Jaguar or something with a Bigsby system on it.

However, if you're determined enough, you could get a Strat to keep stable tuning with a floating bridge, but it requires painstaking setup and probably a drastic change in your playing style to make it happen...

...but you still have to deal with that small tremolo arm. Yes, there are places where you can buy a longer one, but that's just a waste of money.

One of the better ways to do slow bends with a floating bridge on a Strat is to not use the tremolo arm at all. Take your picking hand and "palm down" push-push-push style for a slow flutter-style vibrato, or alternatively lightly grab the back of the bridge and pull-pull-pull for the same effect. As to which one would work better for you, that all depends on which you think feels better when you do it.

Things that will legitimately help with tuning stability on a floating Strat bridge

Use the right saddle upgrade

There is no rolling point for the string to travel on after the string saddle, and the only way to get one on a Strat is by using roller saddles. For a floating bridge, this is the best possible upgrade you can get because now the strings finally have something to roll on.

Will they roll as good as they would on a Jazzmaster/Jaguar or Bigsby? Nope. But it's a very good step in the right direction. When the strings roll at the bridge, that means they are sliding less at the nut, and that's where the tuning advantage comes in.

And to note, roller saddles are worthless on Strats where you don't use the tremolo system; they are only for players that do use the tremolo, and often. If you don't use the tremolo on your Strat, don't get roller saddles.

Use a high-mass tremolo block

The bigger block adds extra weight, and that does make the tremolo arm easier to control because there's more resistance.

There is a drawback, however. This does add weight to the guitar, enough to the point where you will notice it because it's a dense hunk of steel. If you feel your Strat is at "just right" weight right now, putting in the high-mass block may force you to switch over to a padded guitar strap to accommodate for the extra weight when playing the guitar standing.

This kind of setup is something Fender traditionally calls a "big block" setup, because yeah, the block is big.

Use a thinner pick

Strats with floating bridges have the tendency for chords to go out-of-tune slightly if you bang the strings too hard no matter what string thickness you use.

You could try different strings. But the easier solution is just to switch to a more flexible pick, so no matter how hard you bang the strings, they won't vibrate so much that they "waver" out-of-tune slightly for heavy-handed chord playing.

Easy solution: Buy a Jazzmaster, Jaguar or a guitar with a Bigsby on it

Even with all the stuff I just mentioned, in the end you need a guitar better suited to slow bends. And the Strat just isn't it. It's a fine guitar, but just doesn't do slow bends without major setup changes and having you significantly change the way you play.

You're better off just getting a Jazz, Jag or a Bigsby-equipped axe.