Review - Martin SC-13E
Martin SC-13E looking traditional but with a positive modern edge
it’s been a year since Martin startled loyalists with a very new and may I say innovative product. At NAMM 2020 they announced and shows the SC-13E. Then COVID hit and the guitars only showed up in fits and spurts in guitar stores and it is a year since announcement that I have been able to get hands on one for a review. I picked up my review unit today Feb 20, 2021.
Transport
It comes in a gig bag, and one might be critical of a guitar costing approximately $2100 CAD not coming in a hard case. That is fair I think, but I will give Martin credit for at least delivering the guitar in a nice gig bag, certainly nicer than what I see come with more expensive guitars. (Hi PRS, I am talking about the Silver Sky). This one has a tough nylon outer shell and is very well padded with what feels like the same kind of closed cell foam such as is used in pro camera bags. The interior is lined with a very nice blue soft cloth. The bag is reasonably stiff, has shoulder straps and a pocket on the front for sheet music, picks and other paraphernalia.
On removing the guitar from the gig bag, you immediately notice the non-traditional shape, and the deep relief on the lower top cutaway for easy access to the higher frets. You may run your thumb across the neck bolt and be surprised, but in normal play, I ceased noticing this is very short order.
First Impressions
The guitar was new from the factory and arrived detuned and strung with Martin branded coated phosphor bronze strings. They were a bit gritty to my finger so a quick pass of string cleaner resolved that. I tuned them using a Snark until I noticed the little tuner eye in the sound hole that is easily visible from the playing position. It’s bright enough to see in daylight and is very easy to use. As I discovered when I plugged the guitar in, the tuner also mutes the output while active. A nice touch that appeals to me. Tuned up, the acoustic voice is quite nice, with a bright top end and a good bass without being overly boomy. The body depth is like a 000 so the guitar is very comfortable to hold and to hang on a strap. Acoustically it’s very pleasant but nothing like my D-28 or 000-28EC, as in a side by side, I notice something is missing. More on that later.
My next quick step before diving into analysis was to plug it in to my AER Compact 60 Tommy Emmanuel amplifier. The pickup system is really nice, although if you are like me you are going to want to roll the tone off a fair bit as it is quite bright. I set the volume at about 8 and the tone control at the midway position for this first play test. The AER had all it’s tone controls at five (midpoint) with a tiny bit of reverb. While nice acoustically, this guitar likes to be plugged in, and for a coffee house gig (when we can do that sort of thing again), used with a small acoustic amp this guitar would be a great choice.
The Build
Looking on, the guitar has a beautiful gloss finish. That gets it points right off the bat, as I really dislike satin finished guitars. The neck is what Martin calls their Low Profile Velocity shape and High Performance Taper. Whenever I see mcmarketing branding, my BS detector kicks in, so I will leave it that the neck is comfortable and easily playable. What leaps out is the lack of a heel on the neck at all providing easy access to the upper frets. The top is solid spruce and the back and sides are a Koa veneer over something. Martin does not say what the something is although they do imply it is layered in an interview with Industrial Design Managers Tim Teel and Rameen Shayegan on one of the Martin channel videos, while web site specs on Series 13 instruments say solid wood. According to the designers this was a cost decision to keep the price point where they wanted the guitar to fall.
The nut is Corian and the saddle is Tusq on an Ebony bridge. The fingerboard is Ebony and the neck finish is satin. Martin says that the neck is made from select hardwood, which likely means what they have available. I would much prefer that builders be straight up about the materials that they use. Playability in my opinion is excellent. The neck joins the body at the 13th fret and delivers 20 frets to the player, all of which are easily accessible due to the cutaway and the sculpting of the back of the cutaway and the body. Scale length is 25.4 inches.
A really pretty Koa veneer on the sides and back, along with some kind of hardwood for the neck (looks like Sapele to me on my sample). Note the deep cutaway and sculpting to make it easy to access the upper frets.
There is a bright blue position marker at the 12th fret that Martin calls the Celestial Bullseye. The top has a simple white binding and the sound hole has what Martin calls an Aperture design with a blue stripe. It is quite striking and while not common for Martin, is executed beautifully. This is, a very pretty guitar. Martin has not gone all out on the bling, and this appeals to me, this is a guitar to be played, not locked in a case.
If you are already a Martin owner, what will stand out is the X Brace across the back visible through the sound hole. The braces are made from Sitka Spruce and are unsculpted. This helps retain shape but I did not notice any negative impact on sound. The Sitka Spruce top resonates quite nicely. Where I noticed the difference is the stiffness in the back and sides that comes from anytime you use a laminate, and veneer is simply a thin layer of wood with a layer of glue and then whatever is underneath. Martin makes a big deal of not using cheap woods in the bodies, but does not specify what is under the veneer. I think that they should. They specifically do not say that the body is their High Performance Laminate and occasionally refer to it as solid wood. For me acoustically, this sounds like a drop out in the midrange, which is less noticeable when plugged in. (see below for the frequency response graph showing that I am out of my mind) I see that being amplified was one of the design concepts here and in that case, the downsides of veneers and glues in the back and sides can be negated through a good electronics package. In that scenario, the veneer back and sides will also be a help as they will be more resistant to shifts due to temperature and humidity. The guitar comes from the factory Pleked and in my case, right out of the box, the setup was perfect for me.
Electronics
In the SC-13E Martin uses Fishman’s MX-T electronics. It appears that you can get an SC-13E without the electronics package, but in my opinion, leaving it out will engender some lunchbag letdown over time. Martin says the instrument is in their Road Series, and that means take it out and play it wherever. This is the same system used in other Road Series guitars and consists of the Fishman MX pickup system with the added in sound hole tuner (T). Fishman founder Larry Fishman says that Martin wanted the tuner because customers wanted one. There is an under saddle Fishman Sonicore Piezo Transducer which feeds the MX preamp. This means that while you can certainly go into an acoustic amp you could also go straight to front of house or into a DI box. I did the latter as you will see later in this article. Also inside the sound hole are two rotary wheels for volume and tone respectively. For my tests while I tried the tone wheel in all positions, all my assessments written here are with the tone wheel in the midway position. The electronics come alive when a cable is plugged in, remember this if you don’t want dead batteries. As you will see, the pickup delivers a wide frequency response so do use a high quality guitar cable when plugging this instrument in and not some $3 piece of crap.
Classic Martin simple headstock with ebony faceplate and script logo. Tuners are nickel and open backed
A Different Shape
Let’s talk about the body shape. Unlike most acoustics, it is assymetric (cutaway notwithstanding) and the designers disclose that while there is no lefty version yet, it is on their list because unlike symmetric bodies, they cannot just flip the tooling over. I was trying to figure out what it reminded me of until I laid it on my bed beside my ‘65 Reissue Fender Jazzmaster and DING DING, there it was. The S in SC refers to the S shape of the body and it is very similar although in an acoustic to the offset shape of the Jazzmaster. That longer lower rear bout gives more space for the air to move in the body and I think contributes to the sound. The cutaway is nearly perpendicular to the neck and the front of the upper bout actually extends a bit forward before curving back to touch the neck at the 13th fret. At the risk of repeating myself, I think it is beautiful. In Martin parlance the C represents cutaway, the 13 means a 13 series instrument and E means electronics. The minor downside to the S shape, is that you cannot stand the guitar on its own as it will fall over, and placing it on a guitar stand that has a fixed base structure is going to put it off kilter. I put my eval unit on a Hercules Stand using a neck grip and body pad during the evaluation period.
Playing It In
Martin takes pride in their Authentic series of strings, but who would name something unauthentic anyway? Authentic and iconic are two words that make my teeth hurt in the context of guitars as they always sound like something was missing in other products. They are two qualifiers in my game of bullshit bingo. Moving past my own biases, they sound like any other decent phosphor bronze coated string. I do not know if Martin actually makes their own strings, regardless these are ok, but if this were my guitar, and I wanted to stay in the Martin family, I would replace them right away with the Martin Retro strings which are a Monel string. I really prefer the sound of Monel strings on acoustics and acoustic electrics, as well as most semi-hollow and solid bodies. I get a custom gauge built from Curt Mangan with my own label, but I give credit to Martin for their Retro line because they are very nice indeed.
Power to the electronics comes from a 9V accessible through a plate where the strap mount is on the butt. You can access the battery without having to remove the strap (YEA!) and there are no clips to attach, so a battery change is fast and easy. The output jack is separate from the strap pin (YEA!) so you can unsling the strap without removing your cable to your amp. Little things I suppose but for me it shows solid thinking and the engagement of designers who actually play live with amplification.
The more I play the guitar, the more comfortable I find it and the less I notice that is doesn’t have the same tonality as my D-28 or even my Boucher OOO. It’s not bad, it’s different and so to see what the pickup was putting out, I ran the output through the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X into Logic Pro X’s frequency analyzer and grabbed a series of timed screenshots. I have to thank Mr. Brian Wampler for illuminating for me this option.
Frequency Analyzer Capture from Logic Pro X
What we learn from this is that the pickup has a very wide range of response. The guitar is strongest between 60Hz and 300Hz strumming the guitar with open strings in standard tuning. Strength of output falls off quickly after 500 Hz and then diminishes slowly out to 20kHz. The human voice averages around 125 Hz for males and 200Hz for females so the guitar is right in range for balanced accompaniment to a human singer. What I initially perceived as more brightness is shown to be completely in my head as the Martin is not dissimilar to similar sized bodies of other guitars, with a bit less body resonance related to the veneer on the sides and back.
Sample Track
To record this very short sample, I plugged the SC-13E directly into the Hi-Z input on my UA Apollo Twin X which is set as the audio interface to Logic Pro X. In Logic I set up a plain audio track with no amplifier emulation or general EQ. I then did a comparison of just the guitar and then with a UA 610B preamp and finally adding a UA 1176LN Compressor Limiter. I made certain that neither the preamp nor the limiter unduly influenced the sound of the recorded guitar. The UA 610B is a plugin that behaves like a physical UA 610B tube preamp. In my case, the 610B was set flat with only a mild preamp boost allowing me to turn down the output of the guitar and also reduce the output slider on the master track. By working the Piezo less, it is my opinion that I get a nicer toner in general with none of the spikiness often associated with piezo in general. The 1176 is the plugin modeled on the widely studio employed UA 1176 compressor limiter. In my case, compression was set at a very gentle 4:1 with attack and release both at 5 on the dials.
Final Thoughts
I have to admit I entered this evaluation with pretty low expectations. I have never found a laminated wood acoustic guitar to sound anywhere near a solid wood version. No matter what marketing name you put on it, laminated means plywood and just as you can get very high quality plywood, you can also get it with all the resonance of a hunk of rock. The SC-13E that I received was fresh from the factory and sniffing the sound hole, I did not detect the presence of glue, I smelled wood and in the case of the guitar I got, it was pretty close to walnut. The Koa Fine Veneer (Martin’s words) is quite beautiful and in the long term while it does not sound as rich and full as a solid wood guitar, it still sounds very nice acoustically. I also have to consider that from the word go it was designed to go on the road and to be plugged in, and when you do that, it is very nice indeed. It sounds great through the AER, was terrific into Logic Pro X and even sounded good into my old Fishman Loudbox Performer, an acoustic amp that leaves me underwhelmed all the time. It will be on its way now that I have the AER, but that too is another story. This instrument is well built, sounds great, is completely playable out of the box, and that slim fast neck makes it ideal for all kinds of music including fast acoustic solos. The accessibility to the higher frets is a killer bonus.
As often happens, I must extend my gratitude to the fine people at The Arts Music Store who made it possible for me to obtain the short term loan unit for evaluation. My challenge is that I am still thinking of not returning it and buying it instead given how much it has impressed me. Highly recommended. Street price at the time of testing was $2099 CAD.
Until next time, peace
