Martin D-15 Special & Dreadnought Junior D Jr 2e Sapele £1,450 & £599

If you’re looking for a quality, all-solid wood dread from the company that created the beast 100 years ago, both of these deserve your attention. The new D-15 Special is part of a trio of late summer releases – including the reviewed DR Centennial and a 000-15 Special. We have the acoustic version; the electro costs £1,635. Released earlier in the year, our all-sapele Dreadnought Junior electro is just about the perfect downsized home guitar that’s perfectly good to take on stage, too. The acoustic version is £499.

As reflected in the price, our D-15 Special is made at Martin’s Nazareth HQ and the Dread Jr in its Mexican factory. Aside from that classic square-topped headstock and its famous logo, there is little commonality. Our full-size Special, in Martin’s 15 Series, should be all-mahogany but it isn’t: the ‘Special’ bit on this, and the 000-15 Special, is the Sitka spruce (not mahogany) top.

The D-15 Special’s sprayed lacquer matt finish gives the same utilitarian vibe as the standard 15 Series, but with its clean Sitka top and just a single black edge binding (top only), it has quite a modernistic appearance contrasted with the abalone ‘Golden Era’-style diamonds and squares on the rosewood ’board with matching rosewood bridge. Top bracing is non-scalloped, the neck profile is the ‘modified low oval’ with standard taper, just like the DR Centennial, while the tuners are open-backed Grovers.

The oil-finished Dread Junior downsizes the classic body (461mm long by 362mm wide and 113mm deep) and scale length from 645mm (25.4 inches) to 610mm (24 inches), but goes for a 44.5mm (1.75-inch) nut width as opposed to the 42.9mm (1.69 inches) of the standard-sized model. Unlike many minis, this one is all-solid sapele, with unbound body edges, but we have a Richlite ’board and bridge with white Corian nut and white Tusq compensated saddle. This is compared with the D-15 Special’s bone and generic die-cast tuners. As befits its electro status, we get an extra strap button on the heel, while the Fishman Sonitone has a separate battery/output jackplate plus volume and tone rotaries in the soundhole.

Sounds

The D-15 Special is very similar in feel to the DR Centennial and not a million miles away in sound, either: a little ‘smaller’, slightly less powerful and a little sweeter in the high-end. There’s more difference between the Taylor 410e-R and the DR Centennial than there is between this Special and the Centennial. We don’t hear a vastly different range of tones, either. The D-15 is a little more subdued, but not in a bad way – plenty of players would be more than happy here and will have a noticeable saving in terms of cash outlay. With playing time under its belt, we’d expect some maturing, and our older reference DC-16GTE, which sounds a little wider with less mid-range clout, gives some indication of what to expect.

The lil’ Dread hasn’t got the big low-end of the full-size model, so it sounds – hey! – like a smaller Martin, although with fullsize string spacing it doesn’t feel cramped. It’s a first-class fingerstyle, hybrid pick ’n’ nails or out-and-out rocky strummer where the light compression from the hardwood top works so well. The electro performance is far from shabby, either. The tone roll-off pulls down the spiky highs a little, though if this were on our ‘to buy’ list we might well go for the acoustic version and fit an ‘old’sounding soundhole pickup.

Verdict

We were highly impressed by the DR Centennial, but this D-15 Special is well named. A classic old-school-style voice that will no doubt mature into quite a serious dread. The Dread Junior, as we concluded when we looked at the spruce/sapele original, is a real treat, especially with this ‘Depression era’ blues makeover. It makes a serious starter piece, a take-anywhere practice or performance tool, and a really good-sounding bottleneck guitar. Two dreads for the player on a budget they may be, but don’t feel short-changed: these are two very, very good guitars. [DB] Martin DreaDnought Junior D Jr 2e Sapele Martin D-15 Special