Dishonest Guitar Dealers Who Will Lie About Anything To Get A Sale
Anyway, he went there to try out a Martin and, in my opinion, they told him a huge lie to scare him out of ordering a guitar online. They told him he had to be careful because there were a lot of new Martin guitars out there today that are duds that will never sound good. They told him that Martin does not even have control of these dud guitars. They also cautioned that this local Martin dealer has to send duds back to manufacturers frequently and that they end up getting sold on the Internet or EBAY since guitar players wont buy these duds after hearing them. He then asked if we bought these other dealer’s “Sent Back Duds” and sell them on the Internet? This is simply a scare tactic to try to keep a customer from buying a guitar on the Internet at a better price than they are willing to take.
Well at least now he knows he can't trust the guys at that music store. They just flat out lied to him. We buy between 500 and 1000 guitars from Martin each year. We have never sent a dud-sounding guitar back to Martin because we have never gotten a dud from Martin. Think about it. Martin never, ever, ever, sells seconds; they never get out of the building. While touring the US factories of many top guitar makers one will often an entire box of upper end guitars and some as much $10,000 retail each and they will have all been sawn in half because there was some sort of crack or finish quality issue with them and some of them were just burned by the final buffer work. Martin is no different. They just don't let substandard guitars out of the building because it would hurt the reputation of the brand.
You and I both know that Martin has a reputation for sounding better than any guitar on the planet, right. OK, don't you think the people, the experts, at Martin know when a guitar sounds good or bad? Of course, they do! They have this down to such a great science and now they don't have to ever build a guitar that doesn't sound good. They can shape the bracing and tweak the sound of a guitar so it sings before it ever leaves the building. If it was an unredeemable dud, we all know they would saw it in half because a dud sounding guitar would hurt the brand more than one with a finish flaw, yet they saw one in half that would bring more than $5000 just because of a finish flaw.
No, there are no duds out there. Oh, I know, we have all walked into a music store and picked up a Martin that didn’t sound good when we tried it. I will tell you what happens to make Martins sound bad. They hang on the wall at careless dealerships and dry out and the tops get stiff and they are played by dozens of people with greasy hands and the action gets bad and the strings start to thud rather than ring. Oh, the strings look new because some dealers take steel wool and make them look better because they don't want to take the time or money to change the strings but the strings are clogged underneath and don't sound good even though they look new. It is an old trick to make them look good.
I have not had a Martin in years I could NOT make sing like a beautiful bird in about 30 minutes. They are more consistent and better quality today than they ever have been. This is why I hang old Brazilian Martins in our Acoustic Gallery with our new Martins. It is easy to hear that the myth of "The Old Martins Sound Better Than the New Ones" is simply that, a myth. We had a D16 come in today that is one of the top five sounding Martin guitars I have ever heard and I have played thousands new and old. A new D16 and it sounds great. There may be dealers online that do ship guitars that sound bad but it is not the fault of the guitar. It is the fault of the dealer. He should have taken the time make the guitar sing before he shipped it. We cannot afford to have people receive guitars from Oklahoma Vintage Guitar that are not great guitars. Our reputation is far more valuable to us than any single sale could be.