Year: 2025
Builder: Martin
Model: OM-28
Serial Number: 3040499
Top: Spruce
Body: East Indian Rosewood
Body Finish: Gloss
Body Size/Shape: 000-14 Fret
Body Width at Upper Bout: 11.25"
Body Width at Waist: 9.45"
Body Width at Lower Bout: 15"
Body Depth at Neck Joint: 3.35"
Body Depth at Tail Block: 4.125"
Body Binding: Antique White
Body Purfling: Bold Herringbone
Cutaway: None
Rosette: Style 28 Multi-Stripe
Pickguard: Faux Tortoise OM
Bridge: Ebony GE Modern Belly
Bridge Pins: Bone w/ Faux Tortoise Dots
Saddle: Compensated Bone
String Spacing at Saddle: 2.15625"
Neck: Mahogany
Neck Finish: Satin
Neck Profile: GE Modified Low Oval
Neck Joint: Dovetail
Heelcap: Antique White
Scale Length: 25.4"
Fretboard: Ebony
Fretboard Binding: None
Fretboard Inlay: Abalone Diamonds and Squares
Frets: 20
Frets to Body: 14
Fretboard Radius: 16"
Nut: Bone
Nut Width: 1.75"
Headstock: Solid Square Taper and Diamond
Headplate: East Indian Rosewood
Headplate Logo: Script Old Style Overlay
Tuners: Open Gear Nickel
Tuner Buttons: Butterbean
Tuner Ratio: 18:1
Case: Martin Molded Hardshell Case
Pickup: None
Strings: D'Addario XS Jim Tozier Signature PB (.013-.056)
After several years of focusing on electric guitar, I decided to return to playing acoustic fingerstyle guitar and needed a new acoustic guitar (or two) to use as a daily player, since my Hamblin SJ had become too sentimentally valuable and was slightly bigger than I'm currently comfortable playing for extended periods.
What I quickly discovered is that it's relatively difficult to find a small-bodied guitar that checked off all the boxes as far as my preferred specifications go. Ideally, I wanted a body width of 15" or less and a body depth as close to 4" as I could find, due to experiencing arm and shoulder issues when playing bigger guitars for any length of time. Surprisingly, many of the popular small-body guitars still have a body depth closer to 4.5", presumably to avoid losing too much volume. So the Martin 000/OM body styles (with their 4" depth) had an immediate advantage regarding comfort.
For my fingerstyle playing—almost exclusively in dropped tunings like DADGAD and CGCGCD—it was also important for me to find a guitar with a nut width of 1.75" and a longer scale length (over 25") in order to accommodate the dropped tunings without sacrificing too much string tension. The wider nut width is common enough on small-body guitars, but finding one that also had the longer scale length was like hunting a unicorn since almost all the small-body guitars from the most common guitar builders have shorter scales.
The Martin OM-28, however, is a small-bodied guitar with a 1.75" nut width and a 25.4" scale length. It does have a spruce top (and in general, I prefer the warmth and responsiveness of cedar tops), but was otherwise exactly what I was looking for. I bought two of them, so I could dedicate one for DADGAD tuning and one for CGCGCD tuning.
The first decent acoustic guitar I ever owned was a Martin (a 1987 Shenandoah 2832), and I used a Martin 000-15SM as my main "songwriting guitar" (see my
Martin OM-1 for more on that subject) during the 2000s when I was actively writing and recording—so I've been a long-time fan of the Martin sound, and these OM-28s deliver exactly what you'd expect: rich tones with plenty of volume and clarity.
