Martin D-35 1969

Behold, the much sought after but rarely encountered Martin D-35 in its original form, with Brazilian rosewood back and sides; we don’t see many coming available these days, or at least very few as fine as this one. Martin introduced the D-35 in response to a rapidly dwindling supply of Brazilian rosewood in the mid-1960s. A big part of the problem was getting Brazilian that was wide enough to make D-28 backs, and so they came up with a design for a model with a three-piece back, upgraded it with fingerboard binding and a few other nice details, and the D-35, at a higher price point than the D-28, was created. By late 1969 Brazilian was gone for good from the regular Martin lineup, replaced by East Indian to this day. This situation came about from Brazil starting to insist on cutting logs into boards themselves for more profit; Martin needed to have their woods milled in very particular ways, which they'd been having done locally since the 1800s. The Brazilians could not meet Martin's standards and so by late 1969 Martin totally switched to East Indian rosewood for their upper models and Brazilian was over.