{"id":147246,"date":"2025-04-20T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=147246"},"modified":"2025-04-17T08:37:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T15:37:38","slug":"great-acoustics-jason-isbells-1940-martin-0-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/great-acoustics-jason-isbells-1940-martin-0-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Acoustics: Jason Isbell\u2019s 1940 Martin 0-17 \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jason Isbell owns some prized vintage guitars, such as a 1934 Martin 000-28 that he calls the best acoustic guitar he\u2019s ever played. But when it came to recording his solo acoustic album Foxes in the Snow,<\/a><\/em> he turned to this smaller and plainer Martin 0-17, a recent acquisition from Retrofret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listed at $30, the 0-17 was nearly the bottom of the line in Martin\u2019s 1940 catalog\u2014only the 0-15, a very similar model with a less glossy finish, was cheaper, at $25. Compared with guitars like the 00-18 ($50), 000-28 ($90), D-28 ($100), and D-45 ($200), the 0-17 was a more affordable offering for lean times. Martin didn\u2019t skimp on the woods in the 0-17, with its high-grade mahogany body, top, and neck and rosewood fingerboard and bridge, but kept the trim very simple. The body has no binding, and fingerboard dots and a small soundhole ring are about the only decorations. Isbell\u2019s 0-17 has the original Waverly tuners and chipboard case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin 0-17, George Aslaender\/Retrofret Vintage Guitars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Isbell first went into the studio for Foxes in the Snow,<\/em> he made some test tracks with a prewar Martin D-18. \u201cBeautiful guitar, sounded fantastic, but it just ate up the sonic space,\u201d he says. \u201cWhere I sing, frequency wise, is right where a guitar hits when you\u2019re playing chords down at the end of the neck, and I felt like it was getting lost. The co-producer, Gena Johnson, felt the same way, like it was just too much guitar for what we needed\u2014for my voice in particular, not for everybody\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, the modest 0-17 was just right. \u201cThat little mahogany Martin felt really perfect,\u201d he says. \u201cIt fit right in the space where we wanted a guitar to be, and it plays so well.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n\"Acoustic<\/a>\n

This article originally appeared in the May\/June 2025<\/a> issue of Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isbell owns some prized vintage guitars, but when it came to recording his latest solo acoustic album, the singer-songwriter turned to this smaller and plainer 0-17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":147248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Isbell owns some prized vintage guitars, but when it came to recording his latest solo acoustic album, the singer-songwriter turned to this smaller and plainer 0-17.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1678,1146],"tags":[1965],"ppma_author":[1559],"class_list":["post-147246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-0-and-concert","category-vintage-and-collectible-guitars","tag-may-june-2025"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/11945_01-Isbell-Martin-0-17-detail-Retrofret.jpg?fit=1200%2C816&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1559,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jeffrey-pepper-rodgers","display_name":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.jeffreypepperrodgers.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar<\/em>, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of The Complete Singer-Songwriter<\/em><\/a>, Beyond Strumming<\/em><\/a>, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with AG<\/em>, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on Patreon<\/a>.\r\n"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147246"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147645,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147246\/revisions\/147645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147246"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=147246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}