Commonly known as “Martin Guitars,” it’s full name is the C.F. Martin & Company and it has been a long standing developer of high quality guitars for over a century. The name comes from the company’s founder, Christian Frederick Martin who founded it around 1833. C. F. Martin & Company Company are primarily known for their resilient and beautiful sounding steel string acoustic guitars, but they have also branched out and produced electric acoustic guitars, as well as purely electric guitars, and electric basses.
Martin Guitar is well known for it’s unique creativity in structure and design. As a result the company has become a frequent innovator of new developments throughout history of the guitar. One of these innovations was in fact the dreadnought guitar style that is so popular today. The Martin company originally designed and created these guitars for the Oliver Ditson company to sell, but the Ditson’s company closed it’s doors several years later and so the dreadnought stopped getting manufactured. The Dreadnoughts were not produced for a few years until the Martin Company began selling a new version of them in 1931. This is when they came out with the D-1 and the D-2 models, the former being made of Mahogany and the latter Rosewood. Another, even earlier innovation of Martin Guitar is that of X-bracing for guitars. This is when you take two guitar braces and cross them over one another forming an X shape over the sound board, and under the top of the sound hole. They are also the people that came up with the 14 fret neck which gives the guitarist the ability to play higher notes.