(lively music) - The story of Martin Guitar begins in the early 1800s with Christian Frederick Martin Sr.

He was a luthier looking to build guitars, but found a lot of resistance from The Violin Guild at the time.

So he came to the US in 1833, opened a shop and it's been a family owned business ever since.

Christian Frederick Martin Sr. was an innovator.

He essentially created the American guitar, using a blend of Spanish style and German craftsmanship.

And it's been passed down from generation to generation to where we are today.

Sixth generation Christian Frederick Martin IV is running the business.

Not just anyone can build a guitar.

And the selection process for employees here is very rigorous, they go through dexterity tests.

They obviously have to have a sense of pride in their work and it takes a long time of training to get someone from very beginning to actually mastering their craft.

In fact, many employees will work years, if not decades doing the same thing over and over again and learning something new every year.

The X-bracing, which was invented by Christian Frederick Martin Sr. in the mid 1800s is still built much the same way as he did back then.

Now, bracing is extremely important to the guitar because one, it holds it together but if you have too much wood it actually deadens the sound of the guitar.

So we take off just enough to make sure that the top resonates.

Just enough to give that pure Martin tone.

This is called phrasing where we actually cut the channel that will hold the binding that keeps the top and the sides together, and it's actually a lost art.

As you'll see throughout the process of building a guitar.

It's a delicate balance between hand craftsmanship and innovation and technology and it's that technology that helps us grow and helps us become more efficient.

So it's a very important part of the business for Martin, but we wanna make sure that we don't lose what got us here.

And that's that hand craftsmanship and that dedication to quality.

(gentle music) Many skills that are used on building a Martin guitar are lost arts that have been passed down from generation to generation.

And we keep them going because we know the importance of that hand craftsmanship and it's what gives our every one of our guitars that soul, that people appreciate so much.

Building a guitar is not a linear process.

It's a collaborative process.

From shaping the necks, is sanded, polished, the guitar is strong and then it becomes a musical instrument.

(lively music) - The Martin Guitar Museum opened in 2006.

Chris Martin wanted to open the museum in order to tell the story of his family from its early days in Germany to modern day here in Nazareth, PA.

In order to do that, we had to search out and purchase back some of our historic instruments, that we made over the last 180 years.

This is a workbench from the very early days in Cherry Hill.

It was used by C.F.

Martin's son, C.F.

Martin Jr.

Complete toolbox was handed down from family to family member that took very good care of their tools so that they could produce the best instruments in the world.

We made the first Martin D-45 for Gene Autry.

He wrote in letters asking for a guitar with his name in the fingerboard.

And we took some of the styles off of the mandolins we made in the early 1900s, and put it on a guitar for him.

This is the 2.5 millionth guitar made by Martin Guitar and on the front there's a replica of the night sky that C.F.

Martin I would've seen on his journey from Europe to the United States.

- We're always searching for new sources of wood and we often have people come to us that allow us to keep building guitars but cut down fewer and fewer trees.

Christian Frederick Martin IV, has always said he doesn't wanna be the person that cuts down the last tree.

So that's why sustainability is such an important part of of our business.

(gentle music)