Seth Avett On His Custom Martin D-35 Guitar

One of the guitar’s standout features is a flamed Hawaiian koa wedge in the middle of the guitar’s East Indian rosewood back. “The koa on the back, I know, is a little out of left field,” Avett says. “But I wanted to have a special kind of beauty with the classic function of a Martin. The herringbone is there, and that sort of traditional tonal value is there throughout. The only limitation, if you can call it that, is that I didn’t want this to be a $10,000 guitar. I wanted it to be as accessible as possible. At the same time, these are handmade guitars so you can’t just get one for 500 bucks. I just wanted to create something that was high-end material with a relative availability.”

The guitar comes with a heavy-duty, six-latch case, presumably for those who aspire to protect their axes as they travel the world like the Avett Brothers. In fact, the words from Seth Avett in this article were spoken over the phone just hours before the band boarded a plane for Norway, later travelling to Germany, Ireland and other countries before embarking on yet another tour of America.

Avett says that while that he and his brother are obviously happy to be achieving what they were after, they also have learned about dealing with the rigors of the road and the challenges that come with such massive success. “It’s work,” he says. “It’s fun, too, but it takes a certain frame of mind to appreciate it and stay positive with it. But I guess any work is like that. It’s a blessed place to be but it’s a taxing endeavor.”

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