Special 18 Style Dreadnought VTS Guitar

The D18 Special VTS Mahogany Dreadnought acoustic guitar was designed to target the highly-collectible vintage sound of Martin’s 1930’s Golden Era. This period in Martin’s history is considered amongst the finest acoustic guitars in the world. These world-renowned instruments are cherished for their unparalleled tone and considered by many collectors and professional musicians to be the "Stradivarius" of the acoustic guitar. Today, if you could find one of their vintage Martin dreadnoughts, you would expect to pay anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000. For many musicians, that’s totally out of their reach. However, with Martin’s revolutionary Vintage Tone System (VTS), Martin has created a process to capture the look and sound of one of their older instruments and replicate it within a ten-year period.

In the spirit of combining a modern feel with a vintage tone, the D18 Special VTS Dreadnought incorporates a premium grade of Sitka spruce for the top, and temperature ages it to target the sound of the 1930’s. The guitar is then braced with a forward-shifted scalloped 5/16” X bracing pattern to add just the right of color to the tone. Martin then combined its VTS top with a genuine mahogany back and sides, and the playability of a fresh D18, to create a dreadnought guitar that has an extraordinary sound and feel. The D18 Special VTS Dreadnought has a clear, defined treble and midrange tone, with an extremely punchy bottom end. To recreate a vintage look, they added aging toner, tortoise binding and a tortoise pickguard. 

VTS
What is Martin’s Vintage Tone System? It’s a proprietary temperature aging process that allows Martin to target the sound of their vintage acoustic guitars within a decade. It’s like a time machine taking a new guitar and aging it to sound vintage. Martin has honed this process by benchmarking some of the finest examples of their 185-year history, found in their Nazareth, PA museum. Once they reference a vintage top, the new top is aged to the correct moisture content and look of that period. This proprietary VTS process is unique to Martin and can only be found on custom, special and Authentic Martin models.