Just as they say in football that "On any given day in the NFL one team can beat another", the same can be said for guitars. In forty years I have had many, and although I have heard many bad Martins, my favorite is a tight grained dark Koa model, the SPD16-K2, which I string with heavy gauge strings (14-59s) in violation of the Martin coda, without a hint of bridge lift and it has incredible tone. I do a lot of sound jobs for folk and acoustic shows, and in many years I have heard only two or three guitars whose tone could match it, a Martin HJ-28, one old Gibson, and a relatively new Taylor (models forgotten).

Whatever Mr. Martin does with his company, it is our job to compare and buy only those individual models that please us. And that is true for any guitar or guitar brand. And if a young student buys one of the hopped up jobs and doesn't like the sound later, we can call that the Claymore IQ test...