A Guitar is Born | National Geographic

at every step in the making of a Martin
guitar at its Nazareth Pennsylvania
factory you will see the human hand and
the human eye at work bending chiseling
sanding gluing and across the floor of
this factory even playing it’s just that
kind of care that is made marching the
standard of excellence for decades
turning mahogany rosewood and ebony into
treasured instruments but these days
many of the forests that produce these
woods are under increased pressure from
development and worldwide demand the
materials used by six generations of
Martins are getting rarer and chris
martin is facing a challenge and i am
extremely concerned about our ability to
procure ever-increasing supplies of a
dwindling natural resource and so the
opportunity to buy wood that is
sustained that it it will be available
to us in the future has a great deal of
not just charm but practicality in my
mind as the chairman and CEO to that n
Martin is now buying some of its
precious woods from special growers who
spent as much time planting and caring
for these rare trees as they do in
cutting them down Martin is also looking
beyond sustainable hardwoods their
instrument makers now work with
alternative materials including non wood
laminates for some new models of guitars
it’s a choice that Martin is making in
the hope the company will be crafting
fine guitars in harmony with the forest
well into the future