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The steel-string guitar story begins in 1796 with the birth in
Mark Neukirchen, Germany, of Christian Fredrich Martin. Fifteen
years later he was apprenticed to Johann Stauffer, a Viennese
maker of guitars and other instruments. He worked there for fourteen
years, returning to Mark Neukirchen in 1825 – only to find himself
in the middle of a long and bitter dispute between the Violinmakers'
Guild and the unregulated cabinetmakers, over who should have
the right to make guitars. The final ruling, when it came in 1832,
was in favour of the cabinetmakers. Martin, however, had his sights
set on greener pastures, and the following year, he left with
his young family for America.
Arriving in New York, Martin opened a music shop, selling everything
from violin strings to instruments, including guitars which he
made in a back room. But life in New York was a struggle, and
in 1839 Martin sold his shop and bought some land at Nazareth,
Pennsylvania, where there was a substantial community of German
immigrants. Here, Martin concentrated on making guitars, gradually
abandoning the Stauffer characteristics of his instruments as
he responded to the demands of the rapidly-developing American
market.
It was at this time that the distinguishing feature of American
guitars was developed. Just at the same time that Torres was revolutionising
the sound of the Spanish guitar with his development of fan-strutting,
German immigrants to America started making guitars with an X-brace
under the soundboard. Whether or not Martin developed this himself
is not known, but he certainly made it his own, and by the 1850's
most of his guitars were built this way. The advantage of this
arrangement was probably mainly commercial at this stage, as the
X-brace used less wood than Torres' fan-struts. The main virtue
of the X-brace lay unsuspected by makers and players alike for
the next fifty years.
One of the big disadvantages of the early guitar was its lack
of volume. Torres made great improvements with the wider bodies
and fan-strutting of his guitars, but American guitarists wanted
an instrument which could hold its own when played alongside much
louder banjos, mandolins and fiddles at barn dances and the like.
They got what they wanted around 1900, when steel strings came
out. But steel strings exert more than double the tension on a
guitar soundboard that gut strings do. A slight strengthening
of the X-brace was all that was needed to cope with the extra
tension, and by the 1920's it had become an industry standard
for the steel-string guitar. |
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