The first half refers to the “size” or physical dimensions of the guitar resulting in the specific shape, and the second half refers to specifications governing the visual appearance of the instrument and the materials used to create it, known at Martin as the instrument “style.”
[Note: that statement and what follows does not include the designation “14”, as in D-14, 00-14, et al (often seen listed by guitar dealers online as D14, 0014.)
This is a modern invention to denote a 14-fret guitar that a Martin dealer ordered with custom specifications in size D, 00, etc. To complicate matters further, Martin recently introduced Style 12 in their Road Series, e. g. models D-12E, 000-12E. This will likely get confused with custom order 12-fret guitars that some dealers will list as “D12, 00012, etc. SEE BELOW for more information.]
C. F. Martin 2 1/2 17 Flat Top Acoustic Guitar , C. 1875
Beginning in the 1830s, a Martin body size was designated as a number. Using customary sizing of toolmakers and woodworkers, the higher the number on the left side of the dash, the smaller the size of a Martin guitar. Some models introduced in the twentieth century use letters for their size indicator.
C. F. Martin Sr. founded his business in 1833 and was soon offering guitars in sizes ranging up to a size 1, which still seems amazingly small by modern standards. So, when they needed a larger size, Martin used Size 0 starting in 1854. It was considered large enough for a public concert. Hence the term “concert model.” He also introduced the tiny Size 5 that same year.
Size 00 followed, as guitarists began to perform in larger halls, alongside banjos and the mandolin. The 00 was deemed an extra-large guitar for a “grand concert, ” and that term has been used ever since to describe guitars of this or similar sizes at Martin and elsewhere.
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The 00 size does not appear in the Martin pricelists until 1873, the same year C. F. Sr. passed away at the age of 77. However, recent scholarship has discovered 00s built as early as the 1857.
The 000 first appeared in 1902 and was considered to be enormous at the time. It was dubbed the Auditorium size. It had a string scale one half of an inch longer than previous Martins, to compensate for the wider soundboard, and it put out an accentuated bass register when compared to the tonal balance of the 0 and 00 sizes.
All of these sizes had the traditional 12-fret neck designs similar to modern Classical guitars and typically employed gut strings. Various models were made for certain dealers to accommodate the additional tension of the new steel guitar strings as early as 1915.
Martin 012 28 Modern Deluxe And 0012 28 Modern Deluxe
In 1923, Martin began offering such steel-worthy guitars to the general public in Style 17, and in 1924 for Style 18, and 1926 for Styles 21 and 28.
Martin made their first 14-fret guitars in 1929. Be they 12-fret or 14-fret guitars, the most common Martins of the twentieth century can be equated thusly:
00L = Long Grand Concert, introduced 2013. A 14-fret instrument with the slope shoulder shape inspired by Gibson’s Size L of the 1930s that was based upon Martin’s original 12-fret designs.
Christian Frederick Martin
0000 = Grand Auditorium aka size M. Introduced in 1977 as a flattop guitar with the depth of a 000 that uses the body shape from Martin’s Size F archtop Jazz guitar from the 1930s.
OM = Orchestra Model, shares the same body size as a 14-fret 000, but typically has other differences (see below.) Introduced 1930.
S = Introduced January 2020 as the SC-13E. Martin’s first 13-fret design, with a unique asymmetrical size coming somewhere between OM and GP.
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D = Dreadnought (similar to Gibson’s Jumbo size.) Invented in 1916 but limited to a particular dealer until 1931, when it first appeared under the Martin brand. 14-fret version introduced 1934.
DSS = Dreadnought Slope Shoulders. Introduced 2000. A 14-fret dreadnought with the slope shoulder shape inspired by Gibson’s 1930s Jumbo shape, which was originally inspired by Martin’s original 12-fret designs.
Grand J = Grand Jumbo (similar to Guild’s Jumbo.) The Grand J is a flattop guitar adapted from the Martin CF-1 archtop of the early 2000s. Introduced 2015.
C. F. Martin 000 28ec Eric Clapton Signature, 2006
Other builders of guitars have adopted terms like OM and Grand Concert for generic use since the 1970s, typically indicating a 14-fret instrument with a smaller size and narrower waist than the Martin Dreadnought or Gibson Jumbo body shapes.
As stated above, “grand concert” originated with Martin’s 12-fret 00 body size popular in the 1870s. But OM for Orchestra Model actually meant
14-fret Martin body regardless of the size, as opposed to their 12-fret guitars originally designed for gut strings, which were referred to as Standard models.
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In 1929, the original 14-fret Martins were made for a NYC dealer, the Carl Fischer Company, as a four-string tenor guitar with a smaller upper bout than other Martins. A tenor guitar uses the same tuning as a tenor banjo. The goal was to attract banjoists who were adapting to guitars after they started being braced to use steel strings.
This led one popular bandleader to request a special order six-string instrument inspired by those tenor guitars. That “000-28 Special, ” created for Perry Bechtel of Atlanta’s Cable Piano Company, led to the first 14-fret six-string Martins to appear in their official catalog, in 1930. That was also the first year that Martin included the model name on the neck block stamp.
These new 14-fret models were built in the Auditorium size only and were given the name Orchestra Models, or OM for short. Thus appeared the first OM-28 (which included eleven guitars made near the end of 1929, ) OM-18, OM-42 (only two made, 1930) OM-45, and the OM-45 Deluxe (1930 only.)
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In 1934, the model names and neck block stamp were changed from OM back to 000, when Martin converted all their sizes to 14-fret orchestra models. See further along in this article for the differences between modern Martin OMs and 14-fret 000s.
Note: This illustration originated in the late 1980s most likely. The MC is shown with the deeper cutaway that was used on the original design, which had an oval sound hole to accommodate a 22-fret neck. The Jumbo size is not listed but it has the same silhouette as the M, only with Dreadnought side depth. The Grand J has the same silhouette as the CF archtop, only without the cutaway.
Sizes 00L, and DSS were introduced in the twenty-first century after this chart was constructed. I added the GPC, for comparison’s sake, which first appeared in 2010.
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Other Notes: Sizes F, GT, and DF were used for electric guitars. Size L may refer to the Little Martin, if so, it was added by someone later on, as was Size CF.
1)Table reflects Standard Series and other traditional models. Current 16 Series models in Size D, GP, Grand J are made with 000 side depth.
NOTE: Starting in 2022, 12-fret Martins have new names. The old convention was to use an S for “Standard” body size, as in 00-17S. The new convention puts a 12 on the left side of the dash and removes the S, since the 12-fret neck hasn’t been the standard design since 1934. The first models to receive the new naming convention are the 012-28 Modern Deluxe and the 0012-28 Modern Deluxe.
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The instrument Style is also represented by a number. With few exceptions, the higher the style number on a Martin model, the fancier and more expensive are its materials and appointments.
A 000-18 stands for Size “Triple Oh” in Style 18 (or as some older Martin factory workers put it, “Triple Naught”, ) which includes mahogany back and sides, and a top of spruce, with dark bindings on the body, an unbound neck and white dots on the fingerboard, etc.
A D-28 stands for a Dreadnought body in Style 28, which includes rosewood for the back sides, a spruce top, white binding, and typically ebony for the fret board and bridge, and white dots or abalone Diamonds and Squares fret markers depending upon specific model and year of production, etc.
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An OM-45 is an Orchestra Model size in Style 45, the top of the line for a basic catalog model, which includes top grade rosewood with abalone shell inlaid along the edge of the top-grade spruce soundboard, as well as every edge along the back and sides, in addition to fancy, abalone fret markers, and decorative binding on the neck, etc.
000-18GE 1937 – 000 size in Style 18, with specs designated for the Golden Era Series of vintage reissues, in this case based upon the 000-18 made in 1937.
HD-28VS – Herringbone-trimmed Dreadnought size, in Style 28 with specs of the Vintage Series, using the 12-fret version originally known as the Standard body design. More info on the S for Standard body size can be found at the end of this article.
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Guitars with the designation H for Herringbone in their name came with scalloped braces, at a time when many Standard Series Martins did not have scalloped braces. Examples include HD-28, HD-35, and the no-longer-made 000-28H. Today, Standard Series 28 models with the H also get
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