1929 1-28P Lefty

For some reason, today I had the odd urge to find the Loneliest Guitar in the World, that is, a world class instrument that for whatever reason had almost no players clamoring to play it. After looking through hundreds of candidates I settled on this 1929 Martin 1-28P, a small-bodied, four-stringed, left-handed plectrum guitar. Back in the 1920s, plectrum and tenor banjos were the rhythm instruments of choice for dance bands but as popular music got smoother and mellower, the bands started swapping out the banjos for guitars. Guitar companies like Martin, Regal and Gibson came up with the idea of putting tenor and plectrum banjo necks on guitar bodies as way of easing banjo players into the guitar world. The tenor guitar, which had a short scale length of around 23 inches, proved to be a versatile instrument because it could be tuned in a number of ways. Whether it was tuned in fifths like tenor banjo or tuned like the top four strings of standard guitar, it found a home in wide range of musical styles including jazz and folk music and it continues to played today.

The plectrum guitar, on the other hand, was a flop. The plectrum guitar had a long scale length of around 26 inches, and it was usually tuned to CGBD. It was possible to tune it to DGBE, the top four strings of a guitar, but because of the long scale the strings had to be very light and consequently plectrum guitars tended to not have much volume with that tuning, a real drawback if your were trying to provide rhythm for a dance band. Still, if you are playing in a small group, they can sound very good. Over the years Martin built more than 10,000 tenor guitars in various styles but they built fewer than 450 plectrum guitars, and most those were between 1928 and 1934. To add to the general rarity of plectrum guitars, Martin only made 19 1-28Ps and of those, I suspect only one of them was a lefty. So, this particular 1-28P is the rarest version of a very scarce model of an obscure guitar style. It was built during Martin’s Golden era, which means that it probably sounds great, but how many left-handed plectrum guitarists are there out there? If you are one of them, and have $5300 burning a hole in your pocket, I do believe Intermountain Guitar and Banjo has the guitar of your dreams.