Earlier this month we had an opportunity to tour the Martin factory in Bethlehem, PA.

Martins are not hand made in the sense that no one in the factory can make a guitar by themselves. They are hand made in the sense that virtually every operation is still done by hand with very little in the way of machines. The entire process is broken down into dozens of steps and each step is done by a few people who are highly skilled and trained to do just that thing. The result of each step must meet a specification for that step.

We used to think that Martins were expensive but, now that we've seen how much hand work goes into them, we think they're cheap

They have about 700 employees working two shifts and they turn out about 215 guitars a day including all the models they make. Everything is done in that factory except inlaying which they contract out.

Making this many guitars requires a lot of wood so we can see how they might have to lower their specifications on the raw wood. From what we saw they have a great bunch of people trying hard to turn out the very best instruments they can.

Bev and Jerry