Corporate Maneuvers

Shenandoah as a distinct brand of guitars lasted less than 20 years. The first Shenandoah guitar was assembled, finished, and shipped from the Nazareth PA factory in 1983. Just before Christmas of the year 2000, the President and Chairman of the Board of C.F. Martin & Co signed off on the sale of the Shenandoah trademark “together with the entire goodwill of the business” to a company called Dreadnought Incorporated of Wilmington, Delaware. The purchase price was $1. For what it’s worth, the Shenandoah name wasn’t the only thing that traded hands in that deal. Included were other more durable trademarks like “Marquis” , “Golden Era” , and even “C.F. Martin & Co Est. 1833” , so it would seem that Dreadnought Inc was still tied to Martin one way or another. Regardless, the very last known Shenandoah guitars - noted in this website as Type 4 - were apparently sold no later than the year 2000, and those few stragglers bore almost no resemblance to the guitars that shipped in 1983. The physical evidence provided by the guitars themselves suggests that there was quite a lot going on behind the scenes in those 17 years. Apparently, at least three different companies produced actual parts and/or finished guitars while the distribution rights for the Japanese market changed hands at least once.

A basic timeline is laid out below

1972 ——- C.F. Martin & Co signs an agreement with Tokai Gakki of Hamamatsu, Japan that leaves Tokai as the sole distributor of Martin guitars in Japan

1973 ——- Tokai sends a working delegation to the Martin factory in Nazareth PA to observe US conditions and work towards “importing and forming a technical alliance”

1975 ——- Tokai starts marketing the Cat’s Eye brand of acoustic guitars for sale in the Japanese home market. Very close copies of the best-selling Martin models of the time, these early Cat’s Eye guitars are high quality instruments which enjoy an excellent reputation to this day. Where exactly those guitars were actually made is still an open question, with the most likely candidate being the Tokai factory in Hamamatsu

late 70’s ——- Martin starts importing complete student grade guitars from Japan, to be sold in the US under the Sigma label

1981 ——- Martin starts an experiment in hybrid production which sees unfinished body and neck assemblies being made in Japan and then shipped to Martin in the USA. Final assembly and finishing was done in the Nazareth PA factory. These guitars are labeled and sold in the US as Sigmas, with two models available: the Sigma DR-28N and the Sigma DR-35N. Total production for the two year experiment was just under 2500

1983 ——- Martin continues their experiment with hybrid production by starting up the Shenandoah brand. The same basic concept - Japanese parts, American assembly - but this time the guitars displayed the time-honored C.F. Martin & Co logo with one very minor change. The historic “Est. 1833” underneath the main script was replaced with the word “Shenandoah”. The paper label carefully disclosed the fact that the parts were made in Japan and assembled in the USA, while the stamp on the back strip stated only “Made In USA”

The next few years were spent producing a conservative selection of proven styles, mostly dreadnoughts

1986 ——- The first sign of willingness to experiment a bit beyond the ‘safe’ options in the model lineup. Twenty “Miscellaneous Prototypes” were made, specifications unknown. There was also a single example of a Herringbone Dreadnought that featured Brazilian Rosewood back/sides

1987 ——- This was the last year for the “Miscellaneous Prototypes”, with a total of 7 examples made. A small production run of Custom Shop models was also floated: four different models, 25 examples each. These were the first sign of a trend towards small batches of Shenandoahs that pushed the stylistic boundaries set by Martin. The CS-18 had tort binding and a fancy inlay at the 12th fret, a substantial upgrade from the very plain Style 18 it was supposedly based on. The CS-28 had an ebony fingerboard and bridge, with Pre-War Style 45 inlays on the fingerboard. The CS-35 had the same upgraded trim on a Style 35 body. At least one Custom Shop model has been observed with the neck block marked “Brazilian” along with the model and serial numbers

A second period of conservatism, with only standard models and no customs of any kind

1991 ——- With production (and presumably sales) of the ‘bread and butter’ models like the D-2832 starting to drop off, some interesting experiments started taking place. First was a small batch of full on Style 45 dreads, complete with Brazilian back/sides and all trim done with real pearl and abalone. More Brazilian found its way into the back/sides of a batch of 24 Herringbone dreads. This was only a taste of what was yet to come

1992 ——- The year of radical new ideas. No less than eight new models, ranging from traditional shapes in uncommon woods to thinline cutaway acoustics. The Martin organization had managed to get their hands on some spectacular figured veneer and they were certainly making the most of it. Quilted Ash and Quilted Maple dreadnoughts, fancy Mahogany for the newly invented Style 19, Brazilian Rosewood for the top-shelf D-4132 and D-4532, Bird’s Eye Maple for the SE-6032. The Thinlines were a bold departure in a different direction. The sales trends of the period were towards thinner acoustic guitars with cutaways and built-in electronics and Martin made the effort to stay competitive. There were other signs of change in things like fingerboard inlay patterns changing mid-stream on the D-6032 - a model whose entire production total was 36 to begin with. Other experiments were going on in the Finishing Department. The SE-6032 received two distinct variations of traditional sunburst plus at least one example done up with a teal blue sunburst

1993 ——- And all of a sudden, the bottom dropped out. The previous year had seen 1470 Shenandoahs of all descriptions leave the factory in Nazareth. In 1993, the grand total for the entire year was four. Two each of model D-1932 and model D-3532. From this point forward, all of the known Shenandoah guitars were 100% Made In Japan

1994 ——- In August of ‘94 a new price list was issued that announced some of the substantial changes in the line-up since US production had completely ended. Now each model number started with the letter “S”, as did the serial numbers, which used a completely different numbering system than the time-honored Martin system. The model and serial numbers were no longer stamped on the neck block but were instead printed on a paper label directly under the soundhole. The logo on the headstock changed, with the “Shenandoah” name now getting top billing and a much smaller “ C.F. Martin & Co” underneath. The old “Made in USA” stamp on the back strip was changed to “Shenandoah by C.F. Martin”. There were a handful of new models that seemed to favor smaller bodied “folk” guitars. A model S00-28H (00 body size, herringbone trim) was noted in the August 1994 price list, and there was the remarkably niche-market So-16NY (0 body size, plain mahogany back/sides, old-fashioned 12-fret neck and slotted peghead). This peculiar throwback to the folk-music boom of the early 1960’s was never advertised but there is at least one known example. Some of the small-batch experiments seen in 1992 were abandoned but there were other radical new models to take their place. Apparently there was still some of the fancy wood available, and it ended up on the completely over-the-top models SD-34, SD-34C, and SD-64. There were other uncataloged experiments like the SMC-28, a fairly plain variation of the Nazareth-built OMC-2832 from 1991.

One other significant milestone occurred in 1994 (possibly as early as 1993). The Japanese distribution rights for Martin guitars in Japan changed hands. Tokai Gakki of Hamamatsu gave way to to T. Kurosawa Ltd of Nagoya at approximately the same time that US production ended. Elsewhere on this website the Kurosawa name is reliably linked with that of Terada of Nagoya, a highly regarded Japanese musical instrument maker with a history dating back more than a Century

ca. 1995 ——- A new system for model names, and the entire line-up is stripped back to conservative marketplace favorites. No more blingy wood, cutaways and crazy color finishes, just variations on the standard dreadnought with the added touch of a flowerpot inlay on the face of every peghead. One prominent change from the previous Type 2 guitars is the switch back to showing the model and serial numbers on the neck block, but with a twist. The Type 1 maple plate that was glued to the neck block proper was replaced by rubber stamped markings applied directly to the neck block. The paper label of the Type 2’s is now gone and the only visible sign of who made the guitar is the “Shenandoah by C.F. Martin” stamp on the back strip - the same stamp that was used on the preceding Type 2 guitars. The new “M” models - known here as Type 3 - seem to be much more common in Japan than the USA, which suggests that they were made primarily for the Japanese home market. Japanese sources generally agree that these guitars were made by Terada and distributed by Kurosawa

ca. 1998-2000 ——-The last gasp of the Shenandoah guitar brand in the US market, with only a single model that was a distinct step down from previous standards of quality. The model D-3 was about as stripped-down an all-plywood dread as you could find anywhere, and it only seems fitting that they were sold primarily in BigBox stores like Sam’s Club