Mike Dickinson

Welcome to the Martins and More PODCAST! Today, we'll be chatting with our pal Mike Dickinson from Martin Guitar. Mike is the wood buyer for C.F. Martin, and he's also heavily involved with the Martin Museum. From his humble beginnings in the sawmill, to his days in customer service & recent stories of jungle adventures  - it's all here in this episode. Sit back & relax as Maury & Spoon get their Mike Dickinson chat on.  This podcast features the conversation and opinions of musician T Spoon Phillips. A writer by trade, Spoon's longtime association with professional musicians, luthiers, and music historians affords him a richly unique perspective on all things acoustic guitar. This includes decades of close friendship with executives and employee at C. F. Martin & Company, past and present, and the host of this podcast, Maury Rutch of Maury’s Music.  Visit Spoon at http://TSPguitar.com AND at http://onemanz.com/  Check out Maury's Music at https://www.maurysmusic.com  This podcast features the conversation and opinions of musician T Spoon Phillips. A writer by trade, Spoon's longtime association with professional musicians, luthiers, and music historians affords him a richly unique perspective on all things acoustic guitar. This includes decades of close friendship with executives and employee at C. F. Martin & Company, past and present, and the host of this podcast, Maury Rutch of Maury’s Music. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
foreign [Music]

(00:10):
welcome back to Martins and more my name is Maury Rutch and I'm spoon Phillips
and we have something really cool to talk about and someone really cool to talk about it with spoon why don't you
introduce our guests today well our guest is an old friend of Maury
and spoons going back a good ways he's been at Martin guitar for quite a while

(00:35):
wearing a variety of different hats and he's known to many people around the
world and it is Michael Dickinson he's in the building
[Applause] welcome Michael welcome uh thank you thank you uh yes so

(00:57):
old hurts but yeah I've been around a long time at Martin guitar
I'm getting ready to a good 32 years in getting ready to complete year number 33
is coming up in September wow I started there you know we had a
sawmill where you know we were buying logs from various countries all over the world

(01:22):
um and my job initially was
stuff would come out of the sander I was allowed to pick it up and put it down
and I did that for a couple of months and then they sent me over to what the
North Street Building what was known as a Woodworkers dream and we used to sell you know pre-sawn

(01:48):
Lumber all sorts of sizes all sorts of species to Woodworkers and we did guitar
kits for up and coming wannabe luthiers all sorts of regulations changed and we
went strictly and became the guitar makers connection so I made guitar parts

(02:10):
out of hunks of wood I bent sides I glued stuff together and assembled
uh kits for people who wanted to build their own guitars and I also you know in
doing that learned how to build and repair instruments um and then I was then from there I went

(02:32):
into the customer service department um you know I spend most of you know
answering phone calls and emails from people all over the world everything I joke it the number one
question was you know how do I date my guitar and my answer would always be you bring up flowers and
some candy [Music]

(02:58):
yeah um and there I was there for about 10 years and then this weird job came up
and it said something like um go to foreign places look at our wood
supply check open up Supply chains for wood you know 25 of the time you'll be
traveling and I went this sounds cool I mean yeah I'll go to a mill in Canada I'll go to a mill in

(03:23):
Alaska I'll go to a mill in in the southern U.S and I believe my first
official trip was to Finland for some thing and then they about a month later
I was in the forest of Cameroon hunting ebony trees so it's a little little
different than what I expected but and I've been doing that now uh I think it's 12 years I've been the

(03:50):
official sourcing specialist for uh Lumber and Timber for Martin guitar
I had no idea you've been doing that that long that's fantastic I remember when that happened um I mean you're hunting ebony trees do
you have to sneak up on them yes you have to be very very quiet

(04:11):
so you mentioned the North Street Building A lot of people don't know that you're referring to the original site of
modern guitar that was behind the old Martin house that's still there and how
many years did you actually work in that building 12 no 10 10. and a lot of people don't
know that building kind of extends past the that small building in the front did

(04:35):
you ever make any unusual discoveries like up in the attics or down the basement it's like old Martin memorabilia from the old days
yeah surprisingly so um there's three floors to that building well technically
four because there is an attic but the third floor was just boxes full of stuff
and they hired a cleaning crew to literally they opened up the window and were just throwing boxes into a dumpster

(05:04):
um yeah and and one night I'm in dumpster after hours and then pulling
out old forms from the 1800s the 1830s and 40s original drawings from CF the
first and a bunch of other stuff in it yeah at that point that was a newbie there but I still I called up dick poke
right away at that time and I said hey uh we might want some of this stuff and

(05:28):
he came over and together we worked in the dumpster and pulled out everything we deemed you know antique and vintage
and needed to be saved wow amazing amazing yeah I I had a feeling
you were going to say something to that effect because I knew heard stories about stuff that was dis neglected and
covered in dust and stuff on that building play you know in the places people didn't normally go you also were

(05:53):
involved in customer service for quite a while so you were wearing multiple hats at the same time throughout a lot of
that time period yes yeah during the customer service years is when I started getting involved with
the museum when we knew we were going to expand when we knew we were getting close to the 175th anniversary and Chris

(06:14):
said you know it was either build a new building somewhere or expand the existing one he purposely went and set
up and said no we're going to his quote was we're going to tell the Martin story because if anybody's was at the original
not the original Factory on North Street but the original Sycamore Place the museum was two rooms one was like 12 by

(06:37):
12 and the other one was like eight by twelve and there were maybe a dozen instruments in there the other stuff
Chris and Mike Longworth and Dick bockett collected over the years was just sitting on shelves collecting dust
so yeah when the new Museum was starting to be
designed Chris said I need somebody who knows something about really old Martin

(07:02):
guitars and my company's history and I just sort of like raised my hand and went oh sir me me me me me me
you want to hear a funny story about that he just gave me goosebumps as far as talking about that small room uh
where the original Museum was just a couple of rooms the last time I stood in that bigger of the two rooms was when
Sandy and Charlene gave me the news that yes I could become a Martin dealer my

(07:27):
application was granted that's the last time I stood in that in that place that was awesome wow that would have been a good trivia question
so does that make you old too wow you're older than I thought you were
I don't know if I would say oh well you young whippersnappers I remember uh
Michael and I go back through uh we have several things in common one was The Simpsons and which Mario's liked a lot

(07:52):
too so we used to send each other Simpsons stuff and in case they still do and when Mike became uh no no
when Michael became they moved into the wood procurement
um that year they were having a special event for the Martin's Owners Club that was replacing what we used to call

(08:13):
Martin Fest and at least at that time and Michael has stationed in front of
the new Museum the museum was pretty new at that time and to hand out literature
and stuff and I brought him a present um and his boss at that time saw me and
asked me what I was doing and I showed it to him and and uh and he still has it and I've seen photo

(08:37):
evidence that he still wears it in the jungle I bought him an old-fashioned uh Safari pith helmet
to take with him on his journeys yes it's not it doesn't protect you from spider bites as I understand but no but
um yeah there was uh was it in for repair or was it a custom guitar no it was my
custom yes and I felt uh an old case up with

(09:05):
parts from the repair department that they had pulled off of like a broken neck uh some guy had tried drywall
screwing together a top that had you know had a foot put through it and I gathered all these parts and I I put it
in the case and uh mutual friend of ours was going to deliver it dropped it off

(09:26):
and drove around the block I think before Todd realized what had just happened to him yes yes he pulled up in
the big city traffic so I had to run down and grab it and thanks a lot and run back up and go up you know and up and back and it was a good place it away
before a good time later that I opened it that was even the first one because these I have to say this we're actually
retaliations for practical jokes that had played on Michael at times yeah and the people at the cut shop and the first

(09:53):
time first time I had I had leaked some photos online of the
actual custom shop and it was really like photographs of Homer Simpson and you know and it just grabbed very funny
stuff that apparently Custom Shop didn't find too funny so Mike shows up at the Martin fest with my new custom and it

(10:14):
was a bag full of burnt wood and a charred neck
yes you guys are terrible so we go we have a
history about this stuff but speaking of wood I've also I know you know you've gone to India you've gone to uh Africa
you've gone to Central America um and other places you are also involved in going to Scandinavia related

(10:40):
to Martin exploring and getting into wood tour faction with ultimately led to
their vintage tone system which you involved in that in some respects as well yeah because if yes I was I went over to
Finland uh to a wood seminar that was basically about you know sustainability
and using other products and there was a gentleman over there who was uh terrifying Birch

(11:07):
and so I talked to him we he gave me the basic low down and yeah so brought that
knowledge back to Martin guitar handed it off to another mutual friend of ours
Tim teal and then me and Tim set about searching the universe of Pennsylvania
for some place that could uh do it locally because yeah the the freight for

(11:30):
Nazareth to Finland would you know add thousands of dollars to every guitar so we had to find somebody local who had
that technology available and we found that and uh we're still using it to that day
or to this day very very cool so there will be there will be uh Michael
Dickinson's uh intellectual DNA will be remaining at the uh at the market

(11:54):
company long after he's enjoying his retirement so I know the the elephant in
the room right now it has to do with the uh the change of
uh Spruce with the introduction of a new to Martin Spruce species coming in for
General use throughout the line which is uh named after the man that identified

(12:19):
the natural hybrid species by the name of Lutz and can you give us a bit of a
rundown on the when why and how of let's
Spruce Martin guitar the one is now
um the why okay so well let's first talk about what it what is let's Bruce like

(12:44):
you said it is a hybrid so you know you have white spruce on the one mountain you have sitkaspers and another mountain
and then you know like teenagers they run down the mountain and co-mingle at
night so the faces of the mountain are on the
you know so it's our Sitka and then you might have a 10 looks at 20 percent low

(13:08):
it's a thirty percent lots and then you know going up the other Mountain
the the other you know more and more white spruce entering into the thing
um the truth is a hundred years ago we may have been using it we just didn't know
because nobody identified it nobody said oh they just called it spruce

(13:33):
you know when we first when Martin guitar first started doing Sitka they didn't even call it Sitka they called it
Western Spruce so and has it hybrided before it was identified probably trees
have been around for millions of years yeah and it wasn't identified until until the 1970s or 1980s so the
naturalists who I you know identified it so it wasn't that long ago that they even knew it existed

(13:59):
yeah so so the truth is you know if I've
locked you in a room with 10 guitars and told you two of them were let's pick it out I highly doubt you'd be able to do
it because they look almost identical um the very subtle differences but you
get subtle differences between um Spruce tops that's a good point the yeah

(14:23):
the why is for um so the tongas national forest
where most of the sitkus proofs in the world comes from you know for the most
part they're going to stop logging it there might be some selected logging and
Basics that's in southern Alaska that's the southern stretch of Alaska yeah there's Southeastern Alaska and the

(14:47):
companies up there and and different government bodies said you know this this is a very unique Forest
um at the right you're cutting it you're going to run out of wood so they've
opted to you know let the forest regenerate for whether it be a hundred years or a thousand years
which what is a wonderful thing so we've moved the end not we as in Martin guitar

(15:12):
but we the music industry have moved a little more East than went into British Columbia
um and there everything is run by indigenous people groups and
you know they hang out in the valley where what's Spruce is so that's what we
have to use these days you know tonally we've found very little difference visually there's very little

(15:37):
difference I and they're like I said you know 100 years ago I was just going to say there was there
was also a uh that forest was also hit really badly with a a bark Beetle infestation that was actually uh
destroying a lot of young trees too and I think that's what kind of started the panic and that was several years ago but
I think that was also part of the of the forest in uh Forest Service saying that

(16:01):
something you know we have to protect the forest I think that was one of the original Inspirations for that all of
this happening so you are now using Luts basically as the main Spruce or you know
what percentage of it remain sick I mean do you know those kind of numbers can you share those kind of numbers the I
can't share them because we don't know uh it's really it's going to be um like uh year by year is literally

(16:28):
going to be an order by order thing you know we are going to place an
order for x amount of guitar tops and our vendors are going to say okay we can
get you x amount of guitar tops however you know a certain percentage is going to be lots
so another other builders have been using this yeah other builders have been

(16:53):
using this would um and there again you know it's cool
it's cool to point out now only because now it has a name but a hundred years ago it was just called Spruce now the
project that happened several years ago where they were handing out Spruce tops to different Builders and everybody
built one guitar was that let's Spruce or was that some other hybrid do you remember Martin made like one

(17:16):
hd28 for that for that project that was what the Sonic I think that was Sitka
because it wasn't the project called the Sonic Sitka Spruce project that's what it was yeah you're right you're right that was the sonics yeah and that was to
just test uh and I think that project's now the funk but I think that was just to test
how Sitka Spruce reacts over a year so you're supposed to build a guitar and send it away or keep it and then every

(17:43):
so many years do a sound test on it and check the vibration levels and stuff
ah fascinating oh wow I'm fascinating
let me ask you a question Mike that you might not be able to answer or might not want to answer and you can just tell me that much if it's if it's wrong this
whole thing about Lutz Spruce and you can buy a guitar from Martin now going forward we're taping this program

(18:06):
in late February of 2023 so somebody buying a guitar when listening to this show that's probably going to air
sometime in March is it fair to say other manufacturers say come at summertime somebody wants to buy a
tailor or a Gibson do you suspect that either they're also going to be buying a guitar that could be made of Lut Spruce
and if so do you think those manufacturers are being transparent as well or is that just going to be called

(18:31):
Sitka so it's a little tough for me to get
into the minds of what other companies are doing but I I'm assuming that this
is going to be a music industry uh move so anybody involved in the music
industry is going to be using if you're going to be using Spruce from British Columbia you there's always the chance

(18:57):
of getting some lit Spruce in there uh We've chosen to take the path of
of announcing it um without boring people of over all
sorts of legal rules and regulations when you're importing and exporting
especially with a hybrid species sometimes

(19:21):
um you know there's just not enough blank spaces on the piece of paper to fill in
you know Sitka X Lutz you know spruceiana you
know dot dot dot dot dot so um and there I I'd have to do a lot more
research to to figure out what all the legal ramifications are I mean I tell people

(19:46):
all the time I said you know people hey have you heard of this wood it's
called moranti and I go yes I've heard of it well why isn't Martin using it I
said well because 20 years ago it was called Philippine mahogany and the Philippines were pretty much devastated
through a variety of natural occurrences in the wood there is just uh you know it's it's

(20:12):
taken them years to undo themselves from those situations and it's just not commercially available
right now one day in the future it might be and people go wait maranti yes
moranti is Philippine mahogany and and people come up with really cool names for wood all the time I mean the the
flooring industry is great at this you know they will have one genus and

(20:38):
species of wood and call it 15 different things so people think there's 15
different types of wood out there and on it it's not so um
you know as long as you have the same genus I was gonna say it's like the mattress companies that every mattress
company has a different name for their mattress and it's all made the same Factory and that way you can't go compare prices because they you know

(21:03):
are Princess Royal is somebody else's you know whatever the exact same thing well I will say Taylor uh has been using
Lutz Spruce on their 500 series for quite a while and they're now expanding out into other series with it but every
all the Taylor 500s have been Let's uh for a while now and I'm sure the other companies are you know you start use it
too so yeah and I don't think anybody is purposely doing anything wrong by whether or not they're calling it Citgo

(21:29):
or Lutz or whatever I said that's something we'd have to go in and look at all the governmental rules to see what
you actually need to call what you're using I mean and we we've I can speak
from our guitar we've decided yeah we want to call it out as sure as almost a secondary type of wood

(21:50):
so it sounds like if I'm innocently taking your remark and I'm going to figure out what you're trying to say if somebody wants to tell us you know in
April or May I'm going to hold out and I'm going to buy a Gibson or a Blue Ridge at the end of the year because I
want to guarantee I've got a Sit the top yeah that's not guaranteeing that at all it's just pushing the can down the road and they're probably going to use the
same they're all picking from the same place right yeah there's there's only x amount of wood dealers who deal for

(22:14):
musical instruments um and so and we're all buying from the
same places we know each i i people will come
up to me all the time and go yeah I bet you want Taylor to go out of business no I have several friends who work there
and if they do go out of business I hope they all go out with like Amazon and Google stock so so Bob is finally gone

(22:40):
yeah Andy I've given you the company and now I'm closing it down and here's
Google stock for everybody and they all buy beach houses and relax you know I you know I'm
I have no personal Vendetta against any other Guitar Company out there I mean
we're again I've known the wood buyer for Fender I know the wood buyer from

(23:05):
Taylor I I you know I we work at the same companies we visit the same Forest yeah it's maybe just on our little in
our wood area where we're not mean and nasty to each other we leave that to sales people so
oh well I've seen the beach houses along Echo River in Pennsylvania and and uh

(23:28):
you know that's that's that would be a sore consolation of people out in Taylor are getting
you know you get great weather lovely houses
but uh Pennsylvania beach house is not quite the same but uh and of course

(23:51):
you've dealt with a lot of other Woods we'd like to talk about some of those uh which people don't think about but right
now I'd like to talk a little bit about Rosewood and to begin with I'd like to talk about the guitar you finally had made the
Martin guitar that you had made out of a particular wood could you tell us a little bit about that yes so when I hit
25 years of Martin guitar I had a guitar made out of East Indian Rosewood back

(24:16):
and sides but it was a pattern I've never seen before it's basically like quilted Maple this is quilted East
Indian Rosewood um I was in India ah
the company I was there visiting was actually cutting electric guitar belt
angs for a certain electric guitar company and they split open this log and

(24:41):
when it opened up it had this very unique pattern in it and I jumped into a
pit on top of the log and started yelling mine mine mine mine mine
I then took pictures of it and I sent it to the wood buyer from that company I went you're not getting this this is
mine LOL so it was quilted it was it was

(25:05):
like I said it was this weird quilting pattern um and yeah I think we it was
we got enough to make like eight guitars that was about it and a couple extra fingerboarding Bridges
um but yeah and haven't seen anything even remarkable notably close to it since

(25:27):
then uh the the one thing it did do is it sort of reinvigorated the company to
look into something we had done 15 years earlier which is We Now call Wild Grain
yeah so we had purchased a load of wild grain Rosewood and it just sat there
um and then when I brought this set in somebody ran into the back and said well are we willing to use all this stuff and

(25:53):
since then we've been doing the Wild Grain so my guitar sort of helped spur the whole Wild Grain
uh scenario up and since we're talking about East Indian Rosewood
I notice online there's a lot of people talking about plantation Rosewood
um so I just one to explain Plantation Rosewood

(26:18):
people think it's Rosewood trees that people have gone in corn Road and just planted over and over and over again in
Long rows and it's not like that when we talk Plantation Rosewood it's not the
Rosewood that's the on the plantation it's coffee or tea so basically there
are coffee companies and tea companies over in India that will purchase large Parcels of natural forest and then they

(26:44):
do their best to sort of fence it off and then inside those Parcels they walk
through and that's where they will plant the tea plants and the coffee plants so the trees that are coming off of
Plantation are natural forest trees they just have you know coffee and tea
growing underneath them so it's not like when we talk Plantation mahogany wow Plantation mahogany is the English

(27:12):
showed up in Central America grabbed a bunch of mahogany seeds and then went over to
Fiji and other countries and planted all those seeds in cornrows and then just
walked away and let them grow for a hundred plus years so
Plantation in India's natural Forest Plantation mahogany

(27:36):
is human intervention so could I make a quick comment would you agree since East Indian Rosewood is
better than mahogany all the time and it's a fact does that mean Plantation East Indian Rosewood is better than
Plantation mahogany can I get you on the record while you're here oh no I will not say that um
we we know too many people in the same forums who will quote that and email it

(28:02):
to Chris Martin and then everybody else Under the Sun and you know something
you didn't hear it here first folks I take the opportunity every week to push my agenda that rosewood's better
than mahogany okay and you're no different everybody knows he's kidding he's kidding
um but go back to your guitar for a second what is what how what size is it it's a long scale short scale what style

(28:27):
was it in and is that the guitar that you brought to show us at Martin Festa one year when when it was at the Holiday
Inn yeah yeah it's a Triple O 12 fret solid
headstock it's got the Rosewood it has this other wood that was this really cool funky log I found at a sawmill in
Pennsylvania it was called wandu which I believe is originally from Australia and

(28:51):
I just like the way it looked and it had this cool bubbly so I used that for my bindings and inlays
I had used ebony
from Republic of Congo that I had just pulled in for the fingerboard and Bridge
it has the pickguard is a particular shape of a very early

(29:17):
18 we have in the museum because it's not around the center ring it's around
the outside ring and it is a solid headstock instead of a
slotted because there's a 12 fret Dreadnought I bought
for the museum that has a solid headstock and I just like that look of the 12 fret

(29:41):
solid headstock the whole story of the D12 Friend guitar
is um so we buy this guitar from this gentleman he's calls up my uncle just
passed away he was friends with Mike Longworth I buy the guitar about three months later this
later this girl comes in and she demands to see her uncle's guitar

(30:07):
and I'm going oh no so I get the guitar I show it to her and
I have the receipt in my hand I'm going uh we bought it from this guy is everything and she just then starts
crying hysterically about how she's getting married and her uncle was
supposed to play this guitar at her wedding and he unfortunately passed away and like the tears are just flowing down

(30:30):
her face and I'm starting to go no you and and then So eventually what happened
is is you know what is It Something Borrowed something blue is the wedding thing he had a strap in
the case that was just like a blue cord so I undid the cord I handed it to her

(30:53):
and I said mail it back to me after your honeymoon and she did so
yeah wow wow wow so yes Michael
Dickinson has inside stories nobody else does yet again uh Rosewood a varieties
of Rosewood now and I know you were involved like of the

(31:17):
time that Honduran Rose would start showing up on Martin guitars at least again and Guatemalan which had not
really been showing up in Martin guitars and Now Guatemalan has been embraced and is now
showing up I have a fantastic Guatemalan guitar that um that so you guys made for me uh
Guatemalan Rosewood guitar with Adirondacks Bruce top that just gets better and better and better and uh so

(31:42):
tell us a little bit about the introduction or the the embracing Guatemalan now that it's starting to be
used on actual models not just available for custom orders embracing Guatemala
and Rosewood so um with Madagascar in the situation in
Madagascar um I will give credit to Mr Tim Teel

(32:04):
oh I'm sure have you interviewed Tim yet yes we had him on okay yes we did we
have yeah um when we were down to maybe what we
deemed five years worth of material left me and Tim
started looking and hunting Honduras Rosewood was of course

(32:30):
every what everybody deems as the best sounding would it's a little lighter
pink Hue in color pink Hue in color and the trees don't
grow that big so it's it's tough to get a lot of dreadnoughts out of them
um we looked into cocobolo but of course it's very oily it's very resiny you have

(32:56):
to sand it a little bit thinner and some people have allergies to it so
while our dust collection systems were fine and kept everybody safe it was just some people
years ago I think it would actually I think it was Dick boat had a reaction to it
so we we weren't really fond of using cocobolo and there again the amounts

(33:20):
available were just not huge and so we just wondered wondered
looking at to different Sawmills talk to different people and we eventually
stumbled on a place that said hey we have this sort of Rosewood we can get you pretty decent supplies we are the
first company in this country that's harvesting this wood here

(33:45):
um so yeah we um we started slowly but shortly acquiring
it and you know and we we started off slowly with a couple of limited special
editions a couple of Customs to get the public you know behind it
and then eventually we got to the place where you know Madagascar was had to go

(34:12):
away and we needed the replacement so we put this in place wow well I'm a big fan I'm a
big fan I I am glad you guys are doing it now it's available on the new D28 authentic
um the latest version of the D28 authentic 1937 so I think people will be

(34:33):
very happy with those guitars and I'm certainly really love mine a lot and I
know Lawrence uh Lawrence jubery loves his a lot and in fact when I met backstage at a
show he was doing in New York we had both like that week just started negotiations with on our own to kind of

(34:54):
Guatemalan Rosewood tournament so we traded notes and uh and like you said you didn't go into the
problems in Madagascar but they were pretty severe politically and you know in a limited Supply so
yeah there's I I think by now everybody knows
between the politics and and the illegal logging has been you know

(35:19):
in the news hundreds of times and basically what what Maddie the escorted is they went to cities which is a arm of
the United Nations and said hey we need help and you know so
at this point supposedly everything as far as logging in Madagascar is
supposedly closed down and I hope it is and I mean

(35:44):
and who know one day um you know we haven't given up on them I don't know in
any of our lifetimes we'll ever see Madagascar Rosewood again but that's no reason to give up on the cause of
Madagascar and we're in contact with people we know there and if you know if
there's ever anything we can do to help them out we're there and you know something whether it's uh

(36:08):
donating money or just you know joining them at some of these big political conventions to just say you know hey
we support Madagascar and you know we know they're doing the right things
that's a guy speaking of Martin legacies it's important to remember that a big part of Chris Martin's Legacy is his
environmentalism and his uh concern for the planet concern for the environments where these exotic Woods are coming from

(36:33):
and uh and that was a you know uh had a lot great deal to do with why this
change happened at Martin the other thing I want to mention too is as you mentioned people come after you why don't you use this wood a lot of people
don't really fully understand how much wood Martin has to use compared to little individual
guitar makers and that there's lots of wood that you're simply not going to see in a Martin model because you because

(36:58):
you can you just can't get that much quality wood you know to fill the need really
um would you guys mind if I flipped the script and turn the conversation 180 degrees
sure go ahead go ahead go ahead there was a podcast we did a few months back where spoon was bragging about the time
he helped vacuum our pool what can you tell us about Sinker mahogany

(37:23):
if you could see Mike's face that was a stupid joke but I still want to talk about synchrome uh you know what I think
I heard that podcast I I think I heard that podcast
um no so Sinker mahogany so you know we we've done articles and

(37:44):
on it right now you know we are quote
unquote back to normal um but smaller countries with smaller
gross thematic products aren't um and there were all sorts of supply
chain issues as everybody knows you know and we all noticed in our grocery stores

(38:09):
you know one day a shelf would be empty the next day there's stuff overflowing and another
shelf is empty and and supply chain issues are still happening around the world so yeah we get our Sinker mahogany
out of Belize um there's gentlemen company down there

(38:30):
constantly pulling logs up out of the river right now my biggest problem is uh
getting it to the U.S oh can you comment or give us your take on how it differs tonally
so everything I have heard and seen is that it's got

(38:51):
a better base response than other mahogany and a lot of people
attribute that to the the sediment over you know 100 plus years of sitting at
the bottom of the water you can when you cut it you can see in the pores there's
little pieces of of sediment which you know um and I think that just gives it a

(39:17):
reflective quality where it bounces the base better than a
newer piece of mahogany interesting for people who are not familiar with
synchron mahogany in the first place what exactly is it and why how did it get down there in the first place
so Sinker mahogany is wood that the

(39:42):
British cut down in what at the time was British hondurases now Belize and they
used to cut the logs drop them into the River float them down the river and load
them onto boats to take it back to England and the heaviest densest logs or
logs that um came up on a dry shallow spot of the

(40:07):
river would get stuck and eventually sink to the bottom after being you know
waterlogged so we've recently started working in well I
think it's what it's got to be six or seven years now we started working with a company that was pulling these logs
out of the river and slicing them up when you're pulling the the wood out of

(40:31):
the river it's it's hard to tell if some of them you can see old ax marks where
the guys cut it uh some of them may have fallen naturally and may have been in down under there you know for 200 plus
years maybe 300. it's tough to tell from my limited experience of playing it
firsthand and hearing other people play it it does seem to have a I would call it it's a very full body mahogany sound

(40:59):
and whether that's all bass or just a resonance thing but I'm convinced it's
not just uh it just doesn't look different it actually does sound different and I think it's you know I I
understand why people are willing to pay more for it so I think it's you know it's a it's a real thing
um does Martin have enough of it that you think is going to be around or is this going to be a uh sort of a limited

(41:24):
time offer in terms of how long it's going to be around as long as we can find people who are
willing to dive in rivers of Belize we will have it you know is that three years is that
five years I don't know so it's hard to say people
you know asked me that question all the time is like you know next year I want to order

(41:48):
a custom out of sink or mahogany will you have it by then like I I don't know you know so it's not tenuous it might
not be there yeah yeah it's one of the things about the Sinker mahogany is is
since in the the years that we've been down there working with another company and uh two other companies the one
company that actually brings it out the other company that that Mills it for us is the company that

(42:14):
pulls it out has changed three different times due to Circumstance the first guy was just
got up in Asia and decided to retire the second guy got sick and decided to retire and now they have a third person
down there who's taken over the reins of the company so and if if people stop
pulling it up we're gonna stop selling it but hopefully once we reach back to

(42:38):
normal the supply of the logs will start flowing again and everybody can have
their their Sinker mahogany Martin guitars because Sinker is better than east
Indian Rosewood
when I was in Customer Service people would always call up and go I want to buy the best guitar was it is it and I

(43:04):
always said d45 and they'd go why and I said because it puts the most profit
into my company's pockets and they would get very upset at me I was like look best is
um it's hard to describe what best is you need to buy the guitar for your
particular situations and if you're like me and Spoon and Maury you need 12 or 13

(43:28):
guitars to to explore you know the entire Martin Universe good answer
yeah 12 to start I did say I gotta say long ago want to go on the umgf said
that questions and I was sort of tongue-in-cheek saying how many do you really need I said four you need a Rosewood Dreadnought a mahogany
Dreadnought a Rosewood om and a mahogany om and three or four different people

(43:52):
did that and told me they did that they actually based on my post they went out
and bought whatever it was required to do that you get their D28 they're d18 their own om18v and they're m28v so you
have to be careful particularly when you're an expert like Michael Dickinson what you say in public

(44:13):
yes I know my favorite ones was I was um
I was sitting at a guitar show and it was sort of semi-slow so I walked over to go talk to the the people at the
Taylor booth and I'm just sitting down I picked up a guitar and I strummed One chord like 16 people took pictures of that

(44:34):
and posted it online blasphemer I just said yeah and then I
was at another Guitar Show and Chris Martin showed up and this was you know when Claire was still in a stroller and
um she saw a one of these little mini Hello Kitty electric guitars so Chris

(44:56):
being a good dad buys it for her and so there she is holding her little and I think it wasn't even a it was plastic
yeah right you know so Chris pays for it hands it to her like
everybody cell phone technology was was still had cameras but was no and there
must have been a hundred people with cell phones as Chris is walking the pushing the stroller down the aisle you

(45:21):
know taking pictures of of Claire holding this little you know Hello Kitty guitar and putting uh Martin guitar
why isn't she playing an o18 yeah yeah yeah
so that's why they made the Claire guitar now hey we still have one of them
actually I think that was probably years after the Claire guitar the Claire guitars were when she was

(45:47):
born and did this was when she was in a stroller so this would have been a year or two after the Claire guitar yeah but
no joking aside I'm curious to know when you get the wood
milled down to those very thin plates and it goes in to the acclimation room
which for people who've never been there is this enormous humidor warehouse this

(46:11):
enormous humidor Warehouse that smells absolutely fantastic how long does Uh Wood season in there
before it actually can be used and does it change based on what kind of wood it is the species Spruce Rosewood mahogany
so forth the minimum time it can spend in the

(46:33):
acclimating room is generally about three months so there are certain species
um where you know next to the acclimating room is The Sawmill where we store a bunch of lumber
um so it can some of the lumber can be sitting out in the
Sawmill let's say it's out there two years gets song up into those thin plates that means it's it's production

(47:00):
has scheduled enough guitars to use that wood so once those thin plates are cut
up they come in they s we call it sitting on sticks which is you let some air flow around it
um and then you take it off of those sticks and you put it on a different pallet and

(47:24):
you put it in line so it's usually about three months from the but there's also somewhat that's been
sitting in the acclimating room where I bought it in the three plates it's probably been there you know five to
seven years oh wow So when you say this somewhat isn't is
that Spruce and back in sides Woods or is it it's just yeah that's Spruce back inside's next stock

(47:50):
speaking about back and size is now a good time to ask you about fine veneers Michael sure let's ask me about fine veneers
fine veneers are wonderful so for those of you who don't know yet
we started doing some fine veneer laminates um on a lot of our road series
instruments so the five veneers is a thin sheet it's on the back it's one

(48:14):
millimeter thick co-oz or Cody with a core material in between the two pieces
the sides are half a millimeter thick pieces with a core material and we have
that cut and pressed in the US and we then ship it down to
our location in navajoa and they build the SC guitars out of it which are

(48:38):
amazing instruments if you don't own one you should buy one I
I I'm drooling for one but you know life gets in the way my bank account my house knows every
time I have guitar money set aside because like first the water heater went out so I had to replace my water heater

(48:59):
so we built up the guitar fund a second time and my washing machine died so I had to replace that so um yeah yeah one
once the the guitar money gets back up I will definitely be owning an sc guitar
and I have Insider information on another instrument that's coming out soon that everybody's gonna need two of
uh I'll have one of those and just fingers crossed

(49:26):
um yeah so there again It All Leads back to us trying to be as sustainable as possible
um you know if you have a piece of wood that is a guitar back which is let we'll just use
round numbers let's say it starts off at approximately an eighth of an inch thick well that eighth of an inch you you can
get six guitar backs made out of fine veneers oh true that's a good point we we hope

(49:52):
to keep the the precious Woods we're using on our instruments we'd love to keep them around for as long as we
possibly can so you know that everybody we play them the Next Generation the generation after
that the generation after that have access to those same species and one of the ways we can do that is definitely by

(50:13):
using fine veneers interesting and they and they sound really good too
oh no doubt I have to say I was not I was not prepared for the fact that the
KOA and the zirkoti guitars because the back is lined with it as
well actually sound different and I actually hear that that a pretty high

(50:38):
thing you get out of KOA and I hear a little warm bass of your Cody and at first I thought well maybe this is my
imagination because it looks that way but I think it's because they actually put the veneer on the inside of the guitar as well on the inside of the back
and so that's what's actually reflecting the sound waves well you know even if it's just a thin you know millimeter
um but um I was very impressed with that the 13s you know the the level 13 of the

(51:06):
road series and and of course the Cs model uh particularly really cool
so Michael you talked about not predicting the future and how could you know I'd like to ask you when do you think you'll see the first sc13e variant
in the museum it's already there well I mean as a
vintage piece oh as a vintage piece um let's see okay

(51:32):
I will be retired or at least very old um
if if we could get like John Mayer to play one I'm sure that would make sure it has to be in there as a vintage piece
if if you know the first celebrity who plays one and then sells off all of their stuff we will go to auction and I
will be bidding on it if I'm still around so I'm pretty sure within like 10 years some celebrity will once again

(51:59):
decide they need to you know auction their stuff off for charity kidding aside though that's a wonderful
false story and can you tell us a little bit about the museum and and how you're connected to it
so yeah I basically I buy the guitars for the museum and I help Jason honor
with the displays and stuff and tracking the things and there again it was just uh as I mentioned previously you know it

(52:25):
was one of those things where Chris wanted to open up a much larger Museum
and I had read the Mike Longworth book 27 times and devoured as much
information from um you know Walter Carter and you know Fred Oster in Philadelphia and and Kim

(52:47):
Washburn and Richard Johnson and all these guys who had like just spent decades after decade just researching
old guitars and you know where I am very very martin-centric you know some of those
people they can what they know about Martin's you know they also know that much about old Gibsons and they can tell
you you know screw hole locations on Old Defenders and all that sort of stuff and that boggles my mind but yeah when it

(53:14):
comes to Martin guitars I just did everything in my power to talk to and
read everything I could about old Martin guitars and and when Chris asked for a
volunteer to start taking over for the purchasing of these guitars I just like
went me me me me I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it and he said okay and and I've you know we've

(53:40):
purchased a lot of really cool musical instruments
I said there's that we got the first stamp D28
I went up to an auction and met Richard Gere who is
um four foot two in real life I want to meet him so for oh yeah so six

(54:05):
five uh Mike Dickinson yeah six five and then at the the show I had
dress heels shoes on which had probably like a half an inch heel or so so yeah
and literally the poor guy came up to my belly button but he's a guitar geek so like I said hi I'm Mike Dickinson I work
at Martin guitar I buy guitars for the museum he was less like as staring straight up at me going oh

(54:31):
that's so cool you guys need to buy this guitar this I want to come down and see about it and it was really cool and um
yeah so I we bought that one from him and we bought it uh one of the original
specials guitars that sort of led into the production of the d45

(54:53):
um I got a chance to bid on Roy Rogers om-45
um I bought another om-45 at an auction you know a couple of
d28s d18s I know there was a there was a they put a poll or something
on the umgf one day with so like what is your work guitar and how many do you

(55:18):
have at work and I I typed in um pre-war 120
um post-war uh 8642.
because I was lucky enough to have a warehouse full of them at the time so yeah

(55:40):
well every stringing day must really stink for you yeah yes yes
well I don't want to speak out of turn and I think spoon would agree with me but you talked a few minutes ago about your guitar fund and then the washing
machine breaks and stuff I think you got bigger problems if you're buying all these guitars for the museum that's where your money's going Michael

(56:02):
well that's I'm lucky enough to be able to spend Chris Martin's money on those uh
personal yeah the personal fund is is not is not
om pre-war d45 level um I wouldn't even know what the
to do with a pre-war I would be if I owned a pre-war d45 I would be so afraid to play it that I'd probably just lock

(56:26):
it up somewhere so the the guitars I have in my collection right
now are are player beaters nothing
the coolest thing I have is my custom everything else is just a couple guitars I built over the years and some beaters
I picked up here and there nice

(56:50):
well Lori bought more a d45 for Christmas so he now is afraid to play
that it's true yeah I've learned to play it in the case
yes you got to get that first Nick in it sometime nope nope nope nope nope then
you bring it back down and we'll we'll buff it out for you and get rid of it and then the second or third one you

(57:14):
won't cry as hard yeah it's like the uh the Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde I had the
om 28v oh yeah it looks like uh you know we all drove over it with my car and the
d45 is the polar opposite and I uh I get to kind of pick between both of them when I'm done a busy work day but that
d45 uh it's it's pre-World War IV so it technically is a pre-war guitar [Laughter]

(57:41):
yeah yeah yes yeah yes indeed now I know you said
Martin's back to normal after the pandemic and all that but you have not
been going overseas yet do you have any uh trips planned you have anything in the works
yeah I'm getting ready to head to Africa actually I started off this morning uh

(58:03):
at the doctor's office to make sure I was up to date on my shots and pick up all the anti-malaria meds I need and
then had my blood work done to make sure I'm healthy enough to travel so
beginning of March I will be heading over to Africa to go look at wood
wow excellent well we spoke about sustainability and the fact that you get

(58:27):
to go to places like Jungles to look for wood um we haven't really spoke much about
domestic Woods other than talking about the Sitka that comes from Southern Alaska uh Martin certainly has a lot of
domestic words they don't use them that often but what
are some of the American like United States of American grown Woods available

(58:51):
from Martin if somebody wanted a a not just a Guitar Made in America but
wanted the trees made in America but you have and and how popular are they in terms of custom orders and that kind of
stuff so first let's not forget Hawaii is part
of the United States and we do a lot of code with ukuleles and guitars

(59:16):
um you know sometimes it's you know because it's not part of the the continent we forget about that but so we
we do use a lot of KOA um other Woods of course Cherry which has
been our FSC certified guitars for as long as we've been FSC certified uh

(59:37):
since I think what the first time we did that was in 97
um you know we've used Cherry that being the forest stewardship by the way yes
um and of course we've done lots of Walnut guitars we've done you know
there's several different species of Walnut that grow throughout the US and we've done pretty much every species

(01:00:03):
um and and that comes and goes in popularity I mean what we've noticed is
like we can sell a thousand Walmart guitars and then people
who want them sort of cool off and then six months or a year will go by and then all of a sudden Walnut gets popular
again we've done Sycamore in the past of course there's eight different variety of Maples you know not just species but

(01:00:29):
you have you know your bird's eye Maple your quilted Maple your all the different names for flame whether you
call it flamed or curly or tiger or fiddleback we have all of those varieties in stock and and why they're
not as what we don't make as many of those as we do you know mahogany
instruments we do constantly steadily you see them rolling out of the factory you know as I walk through every day you

(01:00:56):
can see those all going through and and it's one of those things where you're
constantly on the lookout for any species that is cool looking and sounds good at one point
I brought in close to 200 different new species that we went through testing

(01:01:17):
to see how they would work and now we're going back and looking at
this because some of them were just you know look-alikes to other woods so you know why
you know buy a mahogany looking wood if you can get mahogany and now we're going okay well if mahogany gets Source we now
want to start looking at mahogany woods so we're going back and re revisiting that sort of stuff

(01:01:42):
um as far as American Woods uh Holly we do but Holly is mostly like inlays the
trees are usually small so we'll do like inlays and bindings out of holly yeah Spruce you said Spruce which is can
come from the U.S off the top of my head I think that's about it as far as um you
know American Woods so any of our listeners that might be thinking why don't you just make all of

(01:02:08):
your guitars from like the neighborhood and walk around you know Nazareth and Lehigh Valley and just build everything
there that's not it's not as easy as that sounds no no the and everybody knows there's a
another Guitar Company that's doing urban forestry which is fine
without getting overly scientific um trees in general like living together

(01:02:34):
for the most part and when you plant a tree and it sits along a pathway in a
park and you know 50 or 60 years later it no longer
sustains life and you cut it down that does not mean that tree is good for
building guitars you you gotta cut the tree into Lumber and you got to look at the Grain and you got to look at the

(01:02:57):
stability is there any rot was there any wormholes you know we get people all the
time call up and go I have an old walnut tree that sat on my grandpop's farm for
you know 300 plus years and you know that if you cut that tree down somewhere
in the middle of it there's going to be a large hunk of metal because somebody nailed something to it at one point or

(01:03:21):
another and you know the the Sawmills I work with in in the area the last thing
you want is a very large bandsaw blade hitting an old you know piece of rebarb
because things just go flying all over the place um and even you know
a lot of times if the piece has been there so long and it rusts really bad

(01:03:45):
some of their handheld metal detectors won't even pick it up and they run into it and it just goes bang wow it's
horrible so yeah a lot of our you know when people are are cutting Lumber they're cutting
lumber for you know your woodworker your door manufacturer your furniture guy and
when you cut wood for guitars where it has to be quarter-sawn it's a whole different

(01:04:11):
resawing scenario so they need to make sure that they're not going to lose money in the hopes of
possibly one day making selling a guitar set you know they need to make sure that the log is guitar quality
and that they can resolve it and make some money out of it it's not just the

(01:04:32):
species of wood it's also like you said the grain has to be correct the the uh
for the stability's sake of it because this is uh particularly when you're talking about solid wood guitars you're talking about extremely thin pieces of
wood that are going to be put under enormous amounts of stress and like you said you don't get scientific about it
but there's a great deal of Science and Engineering that has to come into play there's that famous story where the Fred

(01:04:57):
Martin said that his father had cut down a spruce tree in their own backyard
assuming it was going to make great tops and it was worthless and they just used to make bracing because it just just
wasn't uh viable um let's see we've covered a great deal of
topics here and a great deal of Michael's uh areas of expertise and when

(01:05:20):
you look back at everything you've done what are the things that really stand out to you of
that you're going to take with you when you leave um uh Martin guitar and uh
you know that you're going to think back on as as some of your favorite either favorite achievements or favorite things
you've you've experienced while you're at CF Martin besides us

(01:05:45):
besides hanging out with the unofficial Martin guitar forum and uh
hauling guitars throughout the factory so that Todd can record himself and then
talking to our I.T guys because it doesn't matter how much time Todd had to prepare he forgot a cord somewhere at
home and I had to run to RIT department and go hey do you have a spare this type

(01:06:10):
of cord so Todd can do it uh or oops Todd forgot his battery again he
has to plug in yeah that sort of stuff is going to stay with me every time I
see Todd um so gosh as far as what will stay with me as well
it's it's weird little things like I mentioned earlier the story about my

(01:06:35):
custom and that girl who cried at her uncle's guitar that that will stay with
me when I went to grade school the secretary's name I
better not say well we'll just say Mrs Smith and our vice president of human
resources at Martin guitar was Mrs Smith's daughter and I used to call her

(01:06:59):
by her first name only and somebody looked at me and said you
need to address her as Mrs Smith and I looked at them right now in front of Mrs Smith and I said
she is not Mrs Smith her mom is Mrs Smith and will forever be Mrs Smith this
is always going to be Debbie and Debbie just laughed hysterically over that so

(01:07:24):
that that conversation um diving into the pit at
um the Rosewood Mill to get a small section of a log to use on my guitar
um that's awesome yeah being at different auctions and uh
having lunch with Steve Earle wow

(01:07:50):
um I was sitting down having lunch with Steve Earle and you know we used to have that little
pizza place across the street and I'm sitting there and I'm having lunch with Steve and I just start laughing and he
goes Mike what are you doing I said nobody else in this restaurant knows there's a Grammy award-winning artist in
the building and if you started singing right now everybody would figure out who you are but right now nobody knows who

(01:08:16):
you are and I just I found that funny as could be yeah that's awesome
we don't have the royalty money to sing that song right now but I appreciate where you're coming from yeah
thank you okay Michael I have a two-part question for you besides the safari hat that spoon gave you years ago what is
the best gift you ever received at Martin guitar and why is it Lori's apple pie

(01:08:42):
so me and your wife have had a very unique
relationship oh um mostly based around food mostly yes
um the rest of the relationship was based around the fact that she would
always forget my name and then call somebody in sales and go

(01:09:07):
you know the really tall guy that buys the wood
eventually that person would then email me that you know Lori was asking me a question about
something or telling me hey call Maury it's his when is your birthday that's you just passed well I guess you didn't
do that this year it just passed a couple weeks ago January 13th that's what I was thinking yeah so I thought it

(01:09:33):
was in January it's a month ago well happy birthday belated well thank you she's slacking well not just that but
you're actually right on target but uh right Church wrong Pew spoons got a birthday coming up in a couple weeks now
oh well happy birthday to you too but you knew that thank you very much I
still want to hear about this apple pie that I've you're now going to be M2 premium grade ah oh it's true

(01:09:59):
oh what was the so I know at Martin's on Main
every year we've done it um we talk about guitars and I
always mix food into it and tell people that you will buy them free food
if they buy a guitar through you at Martin's on Main yes and I've I've gone

(01:10:24):
over perogies
shoe fly pie I think it was and some Moravian sugar cake and several other
Foods over the years um and I think the apple pie was well I I
believe I was still in customer service and you needed um apart

(01:10:49):
like a replacement Electronics or something and I said sure but it's going to cost you and
when you finally showed up you had a pie in hand that's kind of brownies once I
think brownies might have been around her birthday but the apple pie started when Lori and I first became a Martin dealer we thought it'd be so cute we're

(01:11:11):
gonna make these well I'll say we but all I did was bring them in the car Lori made these homemade apple pies from
scratch and you should have seen the amount of time and mess that she went through to make maybe six or seven of
them and then the next Christmas season came along and she's like well I I can't not do it again and it was 13 and after
the third year she was like I cannot make 40 pies you you and I know too many people in Martin now look what you

(01:11:33):
started and I think the whole thing fell apart and I don't want to get in trouble on this broadcast and I think only Mike
Dickinson got one one year because she couldn't make a bunch and she couldn't not give Mike a pie that's what I
remember oh yes well and tell her I appreciate it and uh I miss them and yes
that that was always my uh because I think the the very last year

(01:11:56):
it came in with um those little pressure sensors
that you put on your your guitars when you're shipping them to let them know if it took a bang oh yeah you had coated
the entire box with those pressure sensors that is true to make sure that it got
there um without any any you know bumps or bruises to the pie it's hilarious good

(01:12:22):
times my good times yeah definitely well Michael you don't know what the music means but we do I think we're out of
time [Music] okay well thank you very much for having me well and thank you for being on here
we've been wanting to do this for a very long time so so I look forward to seeing you soon uh nams coming up and and our

(01:12:46):
trip to the factory will be coming up so so we'll catch up then all right sounds good thank you so much
for seeing you still from all of us I'm sorry all right from all of us at mari's music yeah
[Music] hear you later I don't I don't know what

(01:13:07):
he said but it sounded like something about a belly rub and a dog
yes I said give Lexi a belly rub for me okay yeah I will give Lexi a belly
[Music] cut out
from all of us at mari's music give Lexie a belly rub

(01:13:31):
now you're both quiet [Music] scratch you later
this has been a presentation of mori's Music your trusted source for Martin and Blue Ridge guitars
find Us online at maurysmusic.com

(01:13:52):
foreign