This guitar is a D-18 Martin. I purchased it brand new in 1963 at Sherman & Clay in Seattle, Washington. I bought it on credit. My down payment was a much smaller New Yorker Martin that I'd had for about 3 months. It just didn't bark like the D-18 did. I paid $12.35 a month for the next 2 years. My first experience with a payment plan!

I have made various modifications over the years. In 1965, I had Grover tuning pegs installed. I was living in Berkeley and I took it to the premier music store on the West Coast, John and Dierdre Lundburg's Guitar Shop, THE place to go on the West Coast for repair work of any kind and also to buy great vintage instruments. In 1969 John told me my guitar needed a neck reset. John advised me to get a truss rod in the neck to avoid having to get another neck reset. This meant taking the fingerboard off, so after some deliberation, I decided to fulfill my lifelong dream and get my name inlaid on an ebony fingerboard. As a child, I had gone to every Saturday matinee at the Ruby Theater in Chelan, Washington, to watch Roy Rogers or Gene Autry round 'em up and then play their guitars at the bunkhouse after a day's work was done...and I said "if I ever have a guitar, I want my name on the fingerboard!" Richard Johnson, who was apprenticing at John's ship at the time, did the inlay work. (He has been a co-owner of Gryphon's Musical Instruments in Palo Alto, California for many years.) Richard had me write my name out for him and he copied my signature. This is before computers, so he had to do it the hard way!

I also purchased an incredible case at Lundberg's around the same time that I got the fingerboard done. It looks like tooled leather on the outside and brown & white cowhide on the inside. I have only seen one other like it.