Gibson’s Iconic J-45 and Martin’s Venerable D-18
So much has been written about these two important milestones in the history of guitar building (the Old World craft of luthiery) that I find myself staring at the screen trying to figure out where to begin. Ah, here we go. I’ll keep it short and to the point.
One thing that immediately comes to mind is a lot of what has been fed to us has centered around defining which of the two is the better. It’s a competitive world in which we live, but we Americans have an inordinate proclivity to compare anything and everything and declare some sort of winner. From “Soup to Nuts”, as a friend was fond of saying, we look at virtually all things this way, from goods to services, to politics, religion and beyond. The thing that is different about this piece is that there is no scoreboard, no finish line. No explanation as to why I can’t or won’t pick a winner because I’m just a simple messenger attempting to give the reader (watcher, listener) an objective summary from which you can decide for yourselves. I see this kind of language every time I wish to learn more about a particular guitar and how it stacks up against another favorite, or two. The “read between the lines”, noncommittal review.
The reason there is no clear winner is that time has already shown the relative equality of these prodigious instruments. Since they were both launched at roughly the same time at some point in the mid-1930’s, almost a hundred years ago, wouldn’t one of them have risen like cream to the top of coffee in all that time? No, that hasn’t happened. Instead, they are deadlocked in one corner of the ring. I haven’t made an attempt at announcing a winner or constructing this in a way where it’s clearly supposed to be a competition. Or, at least I’ve tried not to. But hop onto YouTube and search “J-45 versus D-18” and that will be sufficient to pull up hundreds of comparisons between these to guitars and, I believe you will find that the “winner” is never clear and that the candidates for being chosen as “numero uno” are close to an even split in every important category. Now, I seldom point out the obvious because I find it to be obnoxious…like when others opine about something like the sky being blue. “OK, thanks for clearing that up for us!”. But you can bet that any review conducted by any guitar shop is going to leave it up to us to decide. Since they probably carry both brands being compared it would be the equivalent of poking one bear while feeding another, thereby drawing the ire of the corporate execs (the “bears”) at one of the two companies. What is that turn of a phrase…”risk biting the hand that feeds you”. But, I try hard to give credit where credit is due, and some of these shops have spared no expense in giving you a high-quality video review and follow essential protocols in keeping things fair and objective and that includes the gorgeous spaces with great acoustical dynamics (of course, nothing is more important than ambience) wherein these comparisons are filmed, and the top-notch sound equipment used to record the events. Still, as the listener you’d do well to use higher quality equipment than your phone speaker alone.
My goal is to stick to the guitars themselves and compare things like design, build quality, and the relative quality of materials used to yield the best sound quality as possible at a given price point. I will provide sonic insights but, since I own both of these models and thoroughly enjoy the (differing) tonal spectrum from each, I literally couldn’t choose between them in terms of tone alone. Standard versions of these two guitars are close to the same price at approximately $3K. Enhanced versions can run up to $8K to $10K and custom versions often take off from there. We’ll be focusing on the D-18 Standard (“Reimagined”) and the 50’s Series belonging to the J-45 Standard (no more expensive, just a nice fat neck and vintage style white button tuners…same price as the regular Standard).
It took me a couple of years of steadfast playing before my “musical ear” began to take shape and I began buying more expensive guitars. My first acoustic was a 2009 Guild GAD-140, a well-known American brand built in a state of the art facility in China which produces guitars for a number of brands. Chinese made guitars have come far and they are some the best values in guitars made today. The same can be said of South Korean and Japanese guitars destined for the US market. At any rate, that Guild was a wonderful guitar, making no apologies for its ancestry. Six or seven years later, I sold it but not because it was a Guild but because I no longer wanted a dreadnought with a cutaway and it is the only one I’ve purchased. Guild has a strong following and has included players like Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, and many others over many decades.
Of course, like most people starting out who soon learn that the Martin D-18 is a Holy Grail guitar, I set my sights on one until a perfect purchase in 2012. This was completely serendipitous, but it turns out that Martin chose 2012 as the year they were going to release a “new and improved” version after the guitar had remained relatively unfettered with for at least twenty years. Changes made prior to 2012 were largely incremental. They referred to the new model as “Reimagined” where they had taken a choice vintage Martin and as closely as possible replicated it, from lower bout to headstock brand font (there are several banners Martin has had over its many years). But what were considered real upgrades were to standardize on the neck profile to a “Modified Low Oval, Slim Taper design, use vintage style open-gear Waverly tuners with “butter bean” knobs, a final choosing of “forward shifted X-bracing”, and a fresh “antiqued” look of thin nitrocellulose finish which included “aging toner” to provide more of an amber tone as seen when guitars age for decades. Martin would add the “Reimagined” touch to the rest of its standard model lineup in successive years.
After buying the guitar and setting it up to my liking, I had trouble putting it down and on weekends I would sometimes play for eight hours straight, on Saturday and Sunday. It was a revelation and remains in my collection today as a pristine heirloom which gets played but is meticulously cared for.
Over its almost one hundred years, Gibson’s J-45 has a similar history mixed with occasional greater changes to minor, incremental ones. They settled on their current “Standard” based more on incremental changes than larger ones but the small changes came with greater frequency. There are special limited editions and the J-45 Custom which is a dressed-up version with rosewood back and sides. It’s roughly an extra thousand bucks over the price of the Standard, mahogany model. These two great guitars have had differing historical followings based on differing musical genres and the types of players who gravitate to them. In the 60’s and 70’s the Gibson effectively captured the country and folk scenes, and blues players favored its slightly shorter scale length (called “short-scale”) because the associated decreased string tension made things like string bends and vibrato easier to master. On the other hand, Martin’s “long-scale” was only 3/4-inch longer made for greater sustain and a guitar that took a bit more effort to play, which many people including myself prefer because we like to “dig in” with a pick and have greater resistance with the fretting hand to be used like a broadsword. The D-18 was more at home with rock guitarists and bluegrass players because of its greater bottom end (thicker notes) and note to note separation. The D-18 is also known to be louder and have greater projection which is a real plus for bluegrass players competing with inherently loud instruments like the fiddle and banjo. These are the primary differences in tone and playability and it remains that way today. Like I mentioned, if you need to choose between the two upfront, you have your work cut out in playing a bunch of each model before making your ultimate decision. If you enjoy playing a number of genres, it does help to keep one of each in your “guitarsenal”.
The secret sauce in terms of materials is the same with a sitka spruce top and mahogany back and sides. The main design difference is in body shape. Where Marin came out with a “square-shouldered” dreadnought, Gibson’s”round-shouldered” design has become iconic and less copied. The jury will remain out as to which, if either design is “better”. I am of the opinion that neither could possibly be because exquisite, but different, tones can be coaxed from each of these designs, the biggest difference being that the D-18 has a deeper, richer bottom end while I find the J-45 to have a superior midrange. Neither is more important than the other and, once again, it comes down to personal preference.
I hear regularly that Gibson has had some periods that were/are better than others in terms of build quality but the same can be said of Martin. Over the span of a hundred years, it would be impossible to be hitting the ball out of the park season after season, winning the penant race decade after decade. But taking what I know about these differences in build quality, I would be remiss if stating that they’re completely equal in this category. Gibson has probably had more rough spots in production and QA/QC due predominantly to several changes in ownership. But currently, I believe the two companies are as close to being equal as they have been in this aspect of guitar history.
Right now, I have a young friend who has enlisted me in a guitar hunt. While I have mentioned great guitars such as those being discussed here, he is essentially starting over and doesn’t currently have that kind of a budget to work with. He is a young, hardworking tradesman with a budding family. He is relatively new to guitar but his grandfather had given him his when my buddy was around twelve and he learned the basics before putting it away for ten years. Fortunately, I know my way around the subject of less expensive but strong value guitars and have no doubt that we’ll find something more than suitable. Companies like Eastman, Takamine, and Blueridge are what we’re looking at. These brands make wonderful Gibson and Martin style guitars with great build quality and nice use of materials. I have owned and played these brands and was remarkably enlightened as to just how good they can be at roughly one-third the price of a Martin or a Gibson. In fact, my daily player is an Eastman round-shoulder that gives my J-45 a run for its money. There are those “cork sniffers” out there who would tell him to save his nickels until he can afford a D-18 or J-45. To them I say that hubris is a poor reason to wait for a few more years in lieu of digging in with a perfectly valid Eastman today. You know the type, whether it’s cars or guitars, cynics are right around every corner. They’re only after “the best”.
There is another brand I’m looking into for him but it’s not a recent model guitar. In the mid-70’s to late 80’s, the D-18 and J-45 had become so popular that several Japanese companies began to build replicas and sell them right back to the US market. These were not cheap copies but were built to a fairly high standard. One company, located in the shadow of Mount Takamine was a small luthiery headed by a master luthier and a crack team of apprentices. They began building a number of guitars, the Martin D-18-style guitar among them. These reproductions were remarkably good and sales began to grow. Not only were these guitars virtually identical to the Martin D-18 on the outside, but they were more than a little similar structurally which is where a good portion of a guitar’s tone comes from. Primary materials were the same with a spruce top and mahogany back and sides. The problem was in just how similar these guitars were to those bearing the Martin name. Looking back, I can only think that Takamine believed itself to be insulated by an ocean and that a much larger American controlled company would have difficulty in stopping them. But the Pacific Ocean and six or seven thousand miles didn’t stop the US from winning WWII in the Pacific theatre, but it did buy the Japanese gobs of time before they were forced into capitulating. Similarly, Takamine had begun to take a bite into Martin sales such that Martin put them on notice with a cease and desist order and Takamine made a few minor changes including a change in the shape of Martin’s well-known, squared-off “paddle” headstock and a change to the font used on the headstock moniker. Guitars that were made in the years before these changes came to be known as “Lawsuit Guitars” though things never got that far before Takamine resigned itself to change. Today, these guitars have acquired an almost mythical status as viable alternatives to American made guitars, having a “Martinesque” tonal quality but just different enough such that when recorded they require little if any work to get the sound “EQ’d” in a way that it better serves vocal accompaniment. They have a cult-like following with session guitarists and as such have risen in value and have become collectable. Though they have become rarer, examples of these guitars can still be found on the used market and I’m attempting to locate a good one for my fellow guitarist. They are climbing in price from one year to the next but remain far less expensive than a genuine Martin. All the qualities of a Martin for thousands less.
If there is a true Holy Grail for both Martin and Gibson, it can be searched for among their vintage acoustic guitars. These guitars have increased so much in value that many of them have found their way into the hands of collectors from all over the world, including wealthy Japanese who began buying them up twenty years ago and are in the process of “flipping” them back to American collectors at staggering prices. Note that I use the word “collectors” and not “players”. This has become the subject of heated debate because very few guitarists are affluent enough to buy some of the more pristine examples or even guitars in “good” versus “excellent” condition. By and large, the type of collector in this high-stakes game of buying up guitars ranging in price from $10,000 to over $100,000 and what makes it unpalatable to many guitarists is that they’ve been priced right out of the market and, worse yet, most collectors at this level don’t even know how to play the instruments they’re coveting. Such is life, I suppose, but it’s not hard to understand why American guitarists (after all, these are American made pieces of Americana) are effectively precluded from playing the game. But the Japanese aren’t fully culpable as what’s left of these beautiful guitars has attracted portfolio managers who service our very own one-percenters.
As for the guitars themselves, special, bordering on mystical things happen to (well cared for) guitars sixty and seventy years old, the most important of which is that the natural resins become crystallized and this one thing is responsible for tonal aspects that are virtually impossible to replicate without the key elixir – lots of time. People spend lifetimes chasing the kind of sonic experience that awaits them inside one of these guitars, just dying to come out. The Martin D-18 and Gibson J-45 are two of the most prized models to look for.
The crown jewel of my own collection, a vintage 1966 Martin D-18 in Very Good+ to Excellent Condition
So, here we are at the end of this mini-comparison and as you’ve read, the two guitars are both storied and capable. Sure, they are different animals but each brings too much to the table for me to say one is “better” than the other. I will say this, and that is because of the structural differences, the D-18 has a tendency to hold up better over long periods of time, but the J-45’s ever-so-slightly lighter build is in large part the reason for its sublimely unique tone. We can’t have everything in just one guitar, now can we?! I’ll attempt to answer that question under separate cover at another time.
