Re-string Saturday: Martin SC-13E

Gloomy weather + sick + no money = Stay home. An indoor weekend made a little exciting by the presence of this Martin SC-13E. Not mine though, belongs to an ex-colleague who bought it at the City Music sale yesterday.

It's a showroom piece & the strings were dead. The guitar sounds awful when I tested it for its electronics. I happened to have this SIT set & managed to inject life back into this rather awesome guitar. Folks, if you wish for some crispy tones from your acoustic guitar, do give this Golden Bronze set a try. 

Next to receive some attention were the frets. These look well played (L) & after a quick polish (R), they look shiny & attractive once more.

Last but not least - wood care. The air-conditioned showroom might have dried the wooden parts of this guitar, especially the unfinished & open pore areas. An example would be the bridge; note the dryness (top) & its re-conditioned look (bottom). Folks, dry wood will flake off or even crack if unattended to. The dry fretboard was taken care of as well but it's not as dry as the bridge.

Here are the exciting bits:

• A: The neck sports a shallow C profile, in fact, it feels like some modern Fender electric guitar more than an acoustic where things tend to be beefy in this department. The special feature here is the flattened upper fret / heel area so it appeals to those shredders very easily. In fact, Martin refers to it as a heel-less joint. Very convincing.
• B: Sculptured cutaway bit to encourage more upper fret access especially when the guitar features a cutaway. This guitar is almost heel-less due to the fact that it's a bolt-on construction as seen here.
• C: The guitar also includes a neck tilt adjustment access. A bolt-on construction allows this to happen just like the solid body counterparts.

If you missed it, the SC-13E is an offset design. The understanding of 'offset' here refers to the waist curvatures which are not located at the exact opposite of each other as highlighted above; they are a little misplaced. Of course, the well known offset design we can always understand are the Fender instruments; Jaguar, Jazzmaster, et al.