People often hand me their special guitar to try out, and I've never tried anything I like better than my 1985 HD28 Martin. Tried a few bad Martins (from the 70's!) before this one showed up via George Youngblood, world-class luthier. I'm done. Don't care how good anything else is, this one is all I need.

About the durability: last weekend I started out a gig with my Herringbone on a stand near the front of the stage as our band was getting ready to begin. Somehow the wind caught the thing and blew it off the stage onto the grass below!! I literally screamed into the live single mic, and the entire audience witnessed my panic. Unbelievably, although the guitar was certainly bounced around, it was fine, and didn't even need re-tuning. It took ME awhile to recover, but the Martin was fine, thank you very much.