Kendall, Thanks, I'll need to test drive a Taylor. I saw quite a few of the players at the Merle Travis Memorial Thumbpicking Contest in Mountain View, AR, were playing Taylors. This must be the reason. The Martins are wonderful bluegrass guitars but can be challenging for thumbpicking. Maybe that's why Merle had Paul Bigsby make that replacement neck for his 1938 D-28.

Incidently, that famous guitar of Merle's has been quite resonably duplicated by Harvey Leach.

      - Mark