There's A Funny Little Cat

With A Tummy, Nice And Fat.

Let’s take a look at one more guitar.

This is a special edition of a Martin guitar. As you can see, it has a Felix the Cat theme.

You can see the paper label on the inside of the guitar. Only 625 of these guitars were made, and this instrument is the 146th in the series. The signatures are those of, Don Oriolo, the son of one of Felix’s creators, and C.F. Martin IV.

To be honest, I don’t think that this guitar sounds very good. It is certainly not the highest quality guitar that Martin can make, or has made. It is loud, the sound it produces carries well, but is sounds a bit thin, to my ears.

Martin, produced four different FTC guitars. I am not sure how many years it took to get from the first edition to the fourth, but this is the second edition. From what I have read, the first edition was such a hit that Martin came out with this edition pretty damned quick. Also, each edition featured different graphics.

This is an 0-type, tenor-sized guitar.

The body, is made from something called, High Pressure Laminate; I take that to mean that it is a plastic-ish composite. There is spruce bracing on the inside, so perhaps that warms the sound a bit.

The neck is made from something Martin calls, Stratabond; it looks like laminated wood to me. The fretboard is black micarta, which is a fairly common substance for modern guitars, as the more exotic woods are either prohibited, or far too expensive for an otherwise plastic guitar.

This guitar, and it’s FTC brothers, were obviously made as novelty guitars, for people who like FTC. I can fully understand why Martin did not cover a better guitar with FTC graphics. Not being all that familiar with the modern model designations from Martin, my guess would be that this guitar, in its unadorned state, would be a starter guitar for the budding guitarist. It is easy to hold, easy to get your hand around the neck, and is probably sturdy enough that the parents won’t be too worried about sending little Johnny, or little Suzy, off to music lessons with a $2,000+ wooden Martin guitar.

Having said that, this is not a student guitar, this is for a collector, maybe even a collector who plays guitar. Even with my limited skill with a six string, I was able to get a decent sound out of the instrument, but again, the sound is a little thin, to me.

What you see in the sticky-decal is the last design of the series, the FTC IV.

This guitar is coming up soon, and I am very interested to see what sort of interest it will generate.