Martin guitars had always been credited for its tone and no one could point a finger at that. The cornerstone of the Martin company was tonal balance but Christian Fredrich Martin, the creater of the Martin brand, failed to see the needs of the guitar players, who were being over shadowed by the banjos, mandolin players and other instruments.

Actually, even before the twentieth century, the cry from guitar players was for more volume.

An interesting letter written in 1889 from touring guitarist, Otto Schwemberger, read that he needed strong, well seasoned, deep toned bass as his orchestra which consisted of only three instruments; a violin, a flute and a guitar had to work under tent canvas during that summer. Playing outdoors definitely needed more volume for the gut string guitar.

When Martin Guitars had put its high toned principles aside, a steel stringed guitar was offered in its 1922 catalogue. The smallest and cheapest model, the 2-17 was introduced into the market. The 2-17 was a hit. It was only after two years later that Martin began making bigger guitars, like the 00-21 and 000-18 which solely used steel strings.

In 1931, Martin guitars saw the ukulele sales fall and this caused Martin to fall back on past information regarding their instruments. The OM model, which was Martin's first steel stringed guitar from the ground up and introduced into the market a year before, was very successful. This time round, seeing the demand for it, Martin was interested and ready to build even larger steel stringed guitars.

Dreadnoughts

Martin Guitars had originally supplied Dreadnoughts to the Oliver Ditson Company of Boston. Then in 1931, Ditson was sold and Martin brought the Ditson Dreadnougts under its fold. After the last Dreadnoughts products left Nazareth, Martin built four more Dreadnoughts in two styles. This new models of Dreadnought were sold under the the Martin company's logo.

The production was solely based on steel strings, with belly bridge and long tear drop shaped pick guard. These were standard features for the guitar. A trial batch of four Dreadnoughts was done in 1931. It offered two mahogany types labeled D-1 and the Rosewood models which were called D-2. Two of the first Martin Dreadnoughts were sent to Chicago which incidentally, was the home of the WLS National Dance radio program.

Than in the month of March 1932, one of the biggest of the WLS stars, Arkie the Arkansas Woodchopper, ordered a D-2 with his name carved in mother-of-pearl on the fretboard. And Harty Taylor from the group, The Cumberland Ridge Runners, had a rosewood Martin Dreadnought. As its popularity increased the D-1 and D-2 models were soon renamed the D-18 and D-28 and these models greatly increased the popularity of the Martin guitars.

The most famous and fanciest of the pearl-bordered Dreadnoughts models was the D-45, which was ordered by Gene Autry. The OM models were still more popular than the Dreadnoughts and the reason was because of the Depression. The $100 price tag for the guitar could easily feed a family. The next problem was that Martin did not put the Dreadnoughts into their catalogue and in 1933, only 21 of the D-18 and D-28 totaled were sold. It was in 1934, that the popularity of the new 14 fret OM guitars caused Martin to redesign the old models including the Dreadnoughts.

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