A Modern Day Cowboy Stencil Guitar

There's a long story about this particular Martin D-16 guitar, as you would guess considering the special Western-theme artwork on the face. It all began when Richard suggested to Bob Armstrong that he design a cowboy stencil similar to what was used on scores of cheap mail-order guitars during the singing cowboys heyday decades ago.

Bob had long admired those original cowboy stencil designs, and wasted no time in coming up with designs for both the top and the back of a modern, full-sized guitar. Richard hauled the mock-ups to the 1999 Summer NAMM show in Nashville, hoping to pitch Martin a plan to offer a limited run of cool, cowboy stencil guitars. Chris Martin liked the idea, but quickly veered off in another direction and decided to have Armstrong design full-color paintings to be printed on the tops of Martin's new synthetic-top X Series guitars.

Richard was sharing a hotel room with Steve McCreary of Collings Guitars during that NAMM show, and hung the mock-ups over the big TV screen in their room. McCreary woke up the next morning and turned on the TV for the morning news, but found he was staring at cowboys on a guitar-shaped cardboard page. Collings opted for the design Bob had intended for the back of a guitar, but they used it on the face of their C-10 model, calling it the Collings Western. This featured a cowboy singing to a full moon, with two coyotes providing harmony from atop a pile of rocks in the background. Steve showed up at the next NAMM show with the prototype of this new model, along with a kiddie-sized cowboy hat. All the guitar industry movers and shakers came by the Collings booth to be photographed wearing a ridiculously small cowboy hat while strumming the new Western model. As you can imagine, the Collings Western was hardly the affordable cowboy stencil guitar that Bob and Richard had envisioned when the project was begun.

This turn of events left Armstrong's original design for the face of a guitar still looking for a home, so Bob and Richard proceeded to test it on an inexpensive Martin OM model, a prototype which Richard still owns. Ken Torke, who was Gryphon's webmaster at the time, wanted a dreadnought version, and the D-16 shown here is the result. Both guitars were stenciled at Bob's house in the California central valley, under an orange tree, with the final finish coats added back at Gryphon. To their dismay, they found the process to be far too time consuming to be continued, as who would want to spend three times as much for an inexpensive Martin to get the cowboy theme on the face?

Ken has now moved on to other instruments, so his D-16 is for sale. It's one of only two examples of this design, and the only one done on a Dreadnought model, and the only one stenciled on a Martin made with all solid woods. The satin finish on the back and sides has been rubbed out to a nice gloss, and unlike current Martin D-16GT models, this one is from the period when Martin was using ebony for both the fingerboard and bridge, instead of black Micarta. Unlike the Collings Western, this modern day cowboy stencil guitar doesn't cost five grand, and unlike the original cowboy stencil guitars of the 1930s, it's a real instrument you can play.

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