When I was a young folksinger coming up circa 1960, everyone I admired had or wanted a D-28. That's just the way it was. Still mostly hand made then, they were back-ordered at the factory in Nazareth PA, sometimes for years at a time. I didn't get mine until 1967. It had been made in '58, and came to me from a friend who had fallen on hard times. Ironically perhaps, had I still been a full-time performer I could not have afforded the $400 my friend required to part with Mother Martin. That instrument, and the 1968 Martin 12-string that came to me a couple years later from another friend who needed money, became my constant companions during the years I spent raising my sons. Those guitars helped me through many a dark moment. When I came back to performing in the early nineties, it had become a Larivee world for sure, and how beautiful they are. I play a Laskin these days. It's smaller and sweeter than the D-28, easier for these mildly arthritic fingers to manage. I love everything about Pearl, but the day I decided to buy her, I felt sad. I shed some tears. I knew my relationship with Mother Martin would never be the same.