Mike Longworth was never president of Martin. He did serve as public relations guy for years, and did a helluva job at it. He also organized the company history into useful and readable order.

I knew Mike reasonably well, and worked with him on a couple of projects. While he may have had his faults I'd bet the farm he would not stoop to modifying or falsifying serial numbers. Several other people have produced D-45 clones which were intended to defraud, but I'd have to see proof before I'd believe it of Mike.

It is relatively easy to turn an appropriately aged D-28 into a reasonable facsimile of a ' 45, but very difficult indeed to produce such a conversion which would be indistinguishable from the originals by a knowledgeable collector. The specific arrangement of appropriately sized purflings 'round the soundhole are usually the giveaway, and internal structural details.

As prices rise to astronomic levels for these originals, and the numbers of people who have actually had their hands on an original diminish, it is reasonable to expect there may be an upsurge in the creation of copies.

Would you be happier of I modified my enthusiastic post to read " It APPEARS to be the real deal?" Given that the instrument in question has been examined by several people who can reasonably be expected to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that it appears to have a reliable provenance, I don't think that would be too far out on a limb.

My intention in posting was not to sell the instrument, but to notify enthusiasts that they had an excellent opportunity to see a very good collection of detailed pictures of what appears to be a very good original example of a legendary model. The jpegs are good enough to show details of things like purflings and treatment of the butt strip joints etc., and such references are hard to come by for repairmen and collectors. I stand by that judgement. If that thing is a forgery, it's good enough to serve as a hell of a good example to builders.

If my enthusiasm has offended Mr. privatesson I'm sorry. I was typing at 1:30 am in a blizzard, with our electricity out and running on the generator. The auction ends today, and I wanted to make sure anyone who may have an interest would have the opportunity to see the pics.

As an aside, Mr. privatessons reference to people at the Martin plant being unable to differentiate between one of Mikes' repros and a genuine guitar does not surprise me. In 1976 I was hired to run the service operation at Martin Canada after the then-plant manager mistakenly identified a guitar I had built 5 years earlier as a genuine 1890s vintage 0-40 Martin. The instrument in question had several clear differences from a real Martin, and had been made as an excercise rather than for sale. Later on in the early 90s a chap who had bought a 1920s 0-18 from me took that to the plant in Nazareth. The folks available to him at that time confirmed that the guitar was all original when in fact I had retopped it 20 years before and had deliberately made the soundhole almost 3-16" larger in dia. than the orig. to alert potential buyers to the fact.

The vast majority of the folks at Martin are engaged in the business of producing new instruments, a job at which they excel. There are very few true authorities on the tiny details which verify the authenticity of their old instruments.

KH