D12-1932

Total Production 12

4 pics courtesy of Emjay in Illinois

The official production figures at Martin show only 12 examples of this model being made, all in 1992, but there is apparently one more and that particular guitar has a very interesting backstory. A Martin dealer on the West Coast had a Shenandoah D-1932 in stock in late 1990 which prompted a custom order resulting in the guitar seen below. The customer wanted all the same features as the six-string D-1932, but in a twelve-string version. The order was submitted up the chain and in due course was built, finished, and shipped. The serial number decodes to a full year before the official production run from 1992, and there is another major anomaly that we’ll get back to a little bit later. This guitar has remained in the hands of the person that originally ordered it, and has given great satisfaction in the intervening years. The specs line up perfectly with the other twelve D12-1932’s with the exception of the tuner buttons (ebony instead of gold), a very subtle difference in the paper label, and a major difference in what the factory called the thing….

3 pics courtesy of Tim M

From the 1990 version From the 1992 batch of twelve

For the moment, I’m not at liberty to disclose the exact serial number, and thus there will be no pic of the neck block published at this time. That said, I can disclose the model number Martin stamped on the neck block, and it’s not at all what one might expect

D-1292, in exactly that format

All of the other known Shenandoah twelve-strings have model numbers that are derived using the traditional method that dates all the way back to the 19th Century. Start with the body size (in this case D for dreadnought or D12 for a twelve-string dread), followed by one dash to separate it from the trim Style (in this case, Style 19), then a “32” suffix to highlight the model as a Shenandoah. Work the code in the opposite direction and the features are called out in a very straightforward way. D12-1932 means twelve-string dread in Style 19, and it’s a Shenandoah. How and why the Nazareth factory came up with model number D-1292, - something that breaks all of their informal rules for the naming of guitars - must remain a mystery for now