Back in 1987 a lady fell in love with the idea of an all Koa wood body guitar. Martin Custom Shop hand-picked some truly wonderful highly figured Acacia Koa, from the Islands, and bound it with black (possibly Boltaron) on the two sides, installed four-ply, black-white-black-white top purfling, and a triple concentric ring around the soundhole made up of eight plies of white and black purfling. Its braces under the top remained unscalloped. Its headstock bears the ‘80s style Martin logo, black bordered with a flat gold lettering reading “C F Martin & Co., Est.1833.”
The headstock top edges are, in the tradition of the 1980s, rounded, much like my own cranium; tuners are large metal button, sealed-backs that bear the Martin logo; the nut is polished while the saddle is not; the ebony fingerboard is inlaid in 5 fret positions with 6 mother of pearl dotmarkers of decreasing size. The bridge is standard black ebony with the belly facing downward and houses six black plastic bridge pins with a matching end pin. Nut width is 1 11/16th” and bridge string spacing is 2 1/8”. A Martin Size 0 guitar, called a “Concert” size, is the perfect instrument for the small person desiring a professional quality instrument made in a unique manner (Martin makes extremely few all-Koa guitars, and fewer still Size O guitars). For beauty, for rarity, for ease of use and for an exotic sound quality that can stir the heart of an unredeemable curmudgeon (like, um, Mark Emmert) this Martin Style 0-18K is an unanticipated pleasure.