Neil purchased this 1945 Martin in the late sixties, in Nashville from Gruhn Guitar’s predecessor GTR (George Gruhn/Tut Taylor/Randy Wood).
The D-45 style inlay on the peghead is not original to the guitar.
The most unusual thing about this guitar, so the story goes, is that long ago, before Neil bought the guitar, it suffered a bullet wound. I don’t know the circumstances. The bullet entered on the side of the guitar
and exited, blowing out a full one-third of the face. You can see the seam of the repair on the upper treble side of the face.
It has Brazilian Rosewood back and sides.
A lot of the time, Neil plays it tuned down two frets, to D—and sometimes with the bass string tuned down two more frets, to C. When tuned this way, it is strung with medium gauge strings .013 – .056. As with all of Neil’s performing acoustics, it has stereo F.R.A.P. that I developed and installed in 1976. There will be more about F.R.A.P. in an upcoming article.
