Sources

There are two outstanding sources of information concerning all things Martin. Elsewhere in the Commentary section of this website are selections from these two works that are directly relevant to the Shenandoah story, but having equally detailed info about the Martin models that inspired them is valuable knowledge in its own own right. The production data is straight from the factory ledgers and the authors have been closely associated with Martin for decades

Martin Guitars: A History ——- ISBN 978-0-634-03785-6 ——- Richard Johnston & Dick Boak ——- © 1988, 1994, and 2008

Martin Guitars: A Technical Reference ——- ISBN 978-1-4234-3982-0 ——- Richard Johnston & Dick Boak ——- © 2009

After that, it’s all about the internet…..

This project was originally started to answer a question that had been forming in my mind ever since buying the OMC-2832 shown elsewhere on this website. That guitar was purchased brand-new in 1993 from a Martin dealer located near my home, costing just under $1000 out the door. A screaming deal if there ever was one, especially considering that a bog-standard used D-28 could command as much as double that price at the time. I played that OMC a lot and the urge to find out more about it prompted some casual research that yielded absolutely nothing. No fan websites, no catalog scans, barely even a mention in the popular guitar message boards of the day. A direct inquiry to Martin customer service got me the date and the model number as noted in their production records, and nothing more. What turned out to be the key to unlocking an alternate source of information was commerce. Most people who want to sell something on the internet quickly learn that high-quality pictures of their item are a must. Since I was already on eBay for different reasons, I simply added Martin Shenandoah to my Favorite Searches and started keeping an eye out for other Shenandoahs. Since then, I’ve expanded my research to other platforms like Reverb and Gbase but the basic principle is the same: the sellers provide good-to-excellent pics and information about a guitar that I then copy and file in a (now sizeable) database that’s confined to the Shenandoah brand. This is protected use under US and International Copyright laws as long as the collection and storage is for personal use (research) only. That protection stops the moment I use any of that collected data, be it pics or written text, in a published work such as this website. That is something I am still acutely conscious of and my solution to the ethical dilemma it poses is addressed in the Note at the bottom of every page of this website

It’s at this point that two important predecessors of mine in this endeavor need to be recognised, for they were the only two sources of solid, verifiable, information on Shenandoah guitars that I could find for over 20 years. The first was one of the founders of the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum, a fellow by the name of maccarter, and the other was a professional guitar repair tech by the name of Marguerite Pastella. Sadly, both have now passed on but they left enough threads of the story to allow me to begin weaving the cloth that eventually became this website

maccarter’s thread on the Shenandoahs stood as the definitive source (really, the only source) of information on Shenandoah guitars for more than two decades, and is still available to all on the UMGF Forum

Marguerite Pastella was a Martin Certified repair tech who once owned and operated a business known as Fret Not Guitar Repair, and she undoubtedly encountered many Shenandoahs along the way because of that. The website she built set a very high bar, with a lot of authoritative information about Shenandoah guitars set out in a way that made it easy to find, and use. Everything I found posted there has since been confirmed by my own independent research. The passing of time has now rendered her website nothing more than a memory (although I suppose parts of it might still be available on the WayBack Machine), but as another inhabitant of the Internet once wrote ——- “It’s history that deserves to be remembered”

Last but certainly not least, are the individual contributors that have turned into a major, and highly valued, part of this project. Many of the extremely rare model Shenandoahs that you see on these pages are owned by people who took the time and trouble to reach out and freely share both pics and the known histories of their prized guitars. And prized they seem to be. Right off the top of my head, I can name 3 different ultra-rare Shenandoahs that are still in the hands of their first owner, and they’re simply not for sale. I’ve been contacted from as far away as the UK and Europe about bread-and-butter models like the D-2832 and D-3532 that somehow crossed the Atlantic and found new homes overseas.. There was apparently one Martin dealer in London that got a few Shenandoahs through official channels, but those would’ve been crazy expensive in the local market. High import duties and taxes were a formidable barrier to pretty much anything Martin wanted to sell in Europe. In any case, however they got there, Shenandoahs have been spotted all over the UK, plus Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and France

As far as the nuts-and-bolts of the website, I keep it simple. Just text and pics. No bells-and-whistles that slow down page loading. The primary domain is registered as a .info in order to make it clear that I have no interest in anybody’s money. The coin of this realm is information, not filthy lucre, and I give away more than I receive, which is as it should be. The .com domain automatically redirects to the .info version in order to reinforce the message. The site fees come out of my own pocket, because that lessens the possibility of the entire website going *POOF* anytime soon. Been there, done that, don’t care to do it again….