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The devil is in the details
…or so they say

About us

Vintage Martin guitars from the 1930s are some of the most valuable instruments today, changing hands for significant sums of money.

The rich complex tone and the beautiful simplicity of design mean that these instruments are delightful to hear and play, but the cost has meant that many spend their lives in glass cases rather than being played.

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Because of this, an industry has sprung-up creating lookalike instruments, often that differ from the originals for the sake of cost or ease of construction.

In some cases these instruments have been “improved” with different binding patterns, deeper bodies, larger sound holes and fancy/rare woods.

Our Work

Mear & Gray, however, were keen to make instruments that faithfully follow the original instruments in every way possible.

These original instruments were beautifully simple in both design and construction and we have emulated that but, freed from the requirement to produce multiple instruments every day, Mear & Gray are able to spend more time making sure that everything is perfect…even the bits you can’t see!

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We use hot hide glue, we match the exact dimensions of the original instruments – body size, neck profile, dovetail neck joint, bridge shape & dimensions and we do not install an adjustable truss-rod (because instruments sound better when they haven’t got a huge spring banging around inside the neck).

The only concession that we do make is that we use a single carbon fibre neck rod for reinforcement (in place of either ebony or t-bar) because it’s stronger than ebony, lighter than steel and can be glued-in such that the neck behaves perfectly as one piece.

Fine instruments
entirely handmade in our workshop
by Mear & Gray