My wife’s father was a train engineer like his father before him and his father before him. Every time we would visit her father there was always a guitar case sitting upright in the corner of his room but we never saw it elsewhere and it was never open so I never knew what was in it. I asked my wife and she said it was “Diddy’s guitar”. He had other guitars so I asked if he had ever played it while we were around and she said no but didn’t have a reason why.
6 months ago her father told my wife she could take the guitar and it was hers from here on out. Not knowing anything about it we visited one day and left with this case. We loaded it up and drove the 4 hours back home before opening it up. What I saw was an acoustic guitar that was in shambles. Multiple Holes in the body, tuning pegs were loose, string pegs were gone, neck was kind of bent, ivory was toast, frets were worn down. All in all I was like “why would he give this to us?”
My wife finally opened up and told me this was the guitar her grandfather purchased but she wasn’t sure when. He had played it and then given it to her father as a gift when he was 20 something. Her father was gone on the train lines for months at a time and he took this guitar everywhere during the 60s-90s. He retired and kept the guitar at home and played it all the time with friends and family. When she left the house for college she lost track of it and if here dad played it. Ultimately she guessed it got damaged and was put up in this state.
it was a Martin So we decided to send it to Martin to see what it would take to fix it and make it playable. A few weeks later after we sent it in Martin called back and told us this was a 1946 D18. They’re able to find the serial number during the inspection and confirmed it’s age and model. They said they could fix it and make it playable. So we had them do it and I just got it back last week.
it’s amazing. It sounds so good. Anyway just wanted to relay this as this guitar is basically my wife’s family’s red violin. Haha. We have no idea what stories it’s seen or been apart of but it’s nearly 80 years old and I hope to have given it another 100 years of life to pass on to my son.
