1922
The Timeline of Martin Guitar: 1887-1929
Although Martin didn’t make any mention of building guitars for steel strings until the early 1920s, a few were made on special order starting as early as 1900. About a dozen 0 and 00 models made for steel strings show up in the sales ledgers covering the first decade of the new century, and all were Style 21 and higher, including some pearl-bordered models. The real push for steel strings, however, came in the late ‘teens, and by then it was the less-expensive mahogany models that were given the new stringing.
Southern California Music, which was actually a small chain of stores stretching from Pasadena to San Diego, may not have been as big as Ditson, but being closest to the center of the Hawaiian music hurricane they too wanted their own line of instruments. They supplied Martin with koa wood from the islands for guitars that would be more authentic for Hawaiian music. These all-koa instruments, introduced in 1916, would be Martin’s first production guitars made exclusively for steel strings. Once again, the earliest versions had no markings as to their origin. Impressed by the number sold, Martin cautiously introduced its own line of all-koa guitars a year later. Still apparently unsure of the steel-string guitar market, however, these koa models didn’t appear in the company’s catalogs until 1922. One possible reason for this long delay is that there was considerable friction between lovers of what was considered the true guitar, strung with gut, and newcomers to guitar who wanted to forego years of studious practice and just have fun playing pop songs on steel strings. Instead of risking offense to the gut-string faithful, Martin pitched it’s new all-koa models directly to dealers and let them take it from there.