1964 Martin 000-28C Conversion Steel String Acoustic Guitar- Used

This was originally a Martin 000-28C made for use with nylon strings. The top was fan braced, it had the “loop bridge” with rounded ends, and the fingerboard was flat with no radius. It was converted to an X-braced steel-string guitar in 1977 by Dave Soffa, an excellent repairman in Berkeley who at that time was still doing some work for Lundberg’s shop as well (the underside of the top is signed and dated by Soffa).

You can still see where the fan braces were if you look at the underside of the top with a mirror. Dave removed the top while the neck was out of the body, and then added the herringbone trim to the top before putting the binding back on again. The top was then refinished so the UV shadows where the longer bridge tips had been would be less noticeable. Gryphon probably did the finish, as the lacquer we were using back then had a tendency to develop a lot of checking, and this guitar’s top is no exception (we don’t have any repair records from back then). The flat fingerboard was given a proper radius for a steel-string when the guitar was refretted. Gryphon sold the guitar to a local player we knew well, and we recently bought it from his estate.

The finish on the sides, back, and neck is original, with the original Martin decal on the headstock. There is a tight hairline crack in the middle of the back up near the neck block that was repaired when the top was re-braced. There are no cracks to the top or sides or neck.

Since Martin made their gut or nylon string models with thinner tops, this guitar doesn’t sound like a 000-28VS just back from a visit to the time machine. Instead, it has a sound all its own with oodles of warmth, and with the wide neck it’s probably destined for a fingerstyle player. The top bracing is very Martin-like, and it’s very stable as it’s been strung with steel strings for the last 35 years. It currently has a Trance Audio Amulet stereo pickup installed