Martin

Est. 1833 Website ↗

About

C.F. Martin & Co. is America's oldest guitar manufacturer, founded in New York City in 1833 and headquartered in Nazareth, Pennsylvania since the 1830s. Martin pioneered X-bracing and the dreadnought body style that became the template for the modern steel-string acoustic guitar, and its instruments remain the standard against which other flat-top acoustics are measured.

History

Christian Frederick Martin founded the company in New York City in 1833 after training under renowned guitar maker Johann Georg Stauffer in Markneukirchen, Saxony. The company relocated to Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1838-1839, where it remains headquartered today. In the 1850s, Martin developed X-bracing, an internal bracing pattern that helped prepare the American guitar for steel strings and became foundational to acoustic guitar design ever since. In 1916, working with the Oliver Ditson Co., Martin introduced the dreadnought body style — a larger, deeper-bodied design built for volume and low-end projection that would go on to define the modern acoustic guitar. The 14-fret neck joint followed in the late 1920s, dramatically improving playability. Ukulele production helped carry the company through the Great Depression, and a new production facility opened in 1964 became its primary manufacturing base; the Custom Shop followed in 1979. Christian Frederick Martin IV, a sixth-generation family member, retired as CEO in 2021, and Thomas Ripsam became the company's first non-family-member chief executive. Now run mostly by non-family leadership but still family-owned, Martin builds roughly 190 guitars a day from Nazareth and remains the benchmark for American flat-top acoustic craftsmanship nearly two centuries after its founding.