Martin 00L Oliver Acoustic Guitar – Julie Heffernan’s “Self-Portrait as Arms and the Men” (ETA 6 Months)

A Literal Work of Martin Art

Across Martin’s nearly 200-year-long history, the spirit of boundary-pushing innovation has driven the company’s ascension to world-renowned musicality, a standing cemented among the pantheon of history’s greatest musicians. This striking limited-edition 00L Oliver was born from Martin’s collaboration with lauded American painter Julie Heffernan whose celebrated 2006 piece, Self-Portrait as Arms and the Men, adorns the solid FSC-certified Sitka spruce top. The model’s name honors Heffernan’s eldest son, Oliver, and the dazzling mix of styles present throughout the artwork — conjuring takes on fairy tale-inspired colors and motifs, represented through the lens of the surreal — has City Music’s Guitar Workshop thoroughly enamored by its detailed application, vivid presence, and robust construction. With ebony and solid koa comprising the back, sides, fretboard, and bridge complementing a suite of classic Martin style and their time-tested X Brace pattern, this 00L Oliver was made to be played while retaining the visual fervor that earned Heffernan’s well-deserved tenure among galleries around the globe. A select amount of units of the Martin 00L Oliver will be made worldwide — don’t miss a chance to own this essential piece of art — and instrument — history!

Crafted with a premium foundation

For the 00L Oliver, Martin tapped its Grand Concert body. This tried-and-true element delivers a svelte sloped-shoulder 6-string that supplements its spruce top with medium-flame figured koa at its sides and 2-piece back, while its genuine mahogany neck is capped with an ebony fretboard. Especially when used as a top wood for acoustics, Sitka spruce is many a luthier’s preference given its expansive dynamic range, powerful projection, enduring resonance, and fundamental-focused voicing that largely eschews overtones. The koa back and sides imbue your foundational tones with a rich yet balanced presence that’s crisp, snappy, and shimmering throughout the spectrum, adding a touch of extra emphasis to your midrange frequencies that will only get better with age. Genuine mahogany was used for the 00L Oliver’s neck. Tonally, mahogany shares many properties with koa that mutually reinforce one another, including sparkling harmonics and hefty, organic mids, adding to mahogany’s distinctive adaptability to “light-” and “dark-handed” play styles. An ebony fretboard completes the tetrad of tonewoods of this 00L Oliver, prized for its bell-like clarity, near-limitless sustain, and pervasive presence that packs precision into every register.

Style and substance abound

The 00L and reiterations on the shape have found homes among myriad styles and performance preferences, but these guitars thrive among fingerpicking specialists, especially in studio settings. For this 00L Oliver, its sloped-shoulder profile augments this excellence while still retaining a versatility that virtually any player will enjoy, thanks to the neck’s Modified Low Oval profile — balanced in-hand heft and comfort are supplied in satin-finished spades. The 20-fret ebony fingerboard that hosts Martin’s Old Style 18 inlay pattern — complete with tortoiseshell-style binding at the top, back, and sides — beautifully complements Heffernan’s attention-grabbing artwork.

X-braced with plenty of projection and precision

Martin’s time-tested X-bracing system undergirds the exceptional output of the 00L Oliver. The namesake crisscrossed bracing design is paramount to the quintessential Martin sound, methodically crafted to temper physical strength and flexibility with unencumbered resonance and the endurance to hold up to the tension of steel strings. What results is a pliable dynamic range with detailed, reactive tones abounding. Moreover, the 00L Oliver, in particular, utilizes scalloped braces. Because the 00L shape errs on the smaller of Martin’s acoustic guitar-body sizes, this tends to pare down on bass-heavy sounds. By itself, this makes any 00L a fantastic studio 6-string.

Julie Heffernan: wanderlust, into the wicked, wonderful, and whimsy

Describing where and how Julie Heffernan’s inspirations, influences, or upbringing intersect with her work is no easy task. The world-revered painter’s works have been exhibited everywhere from New York City and San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan, and Cassis, France. Heffernan’s pieces tap into an intersecting nexus of motifs tied to environmental disaster, divinity, destruction, detritus, and delight, with additional elements tethered to the theological and thematic throughlines of her Catholic upbringing. These mergers are depicted as vivid, imaginative landscapes that are channeled through a kaleidoscopic surrealism that might answer the question, “What if Hieronymus Bosch illustrated children’s fairy tale books?” Figurative imagery comprising numerous natural, man-made, fantastical, and unreal elements exudes a brightly lit yet melancholy-tinged menagerie of introspective music and existential contemplation. It’s this reverence Heffernan holds for the oft-overlooked wonders of nature that made her partnership with Martin a solid fit. The resulting 00L echoes Martin’s commitment to sustainability while echoing Heffernan’s oeuvre, her compassion for the future, and the sense and beauty of the world that awaits her sons.

Martin 00L Oliver Features:

• Limited-edition acoustic guitar designed in collaboration with American painter Julie Heffernan
• FSC-certified, solid Sitka spruce top features Heffernan’s “Self-Portrait as Arms and the Men”
• Medium-flame koa back and sides conjure rich harmonics and resounding projection
• Genuine mahogany neck supplies blossoming overtones and prismatic character, remaining adaptable to multiple playstyles
• Ebony fretboard and bridge conjure enduring sustain, bell-like clarity, and powerful presence in every register
• Sloped shoulder, Modified Low Oval neck profile, and dovetail neck joint expertly accommodate fingerpicked play styles and beyond
• X Brace system and scalloped braces optimize weight, physical flexibility, projection, and responsiveness
• Old Style 18 fretboard inlays add a dash of classic Martin aesthetics that complement the top’s eye-catching artwork
• 1.75-in. bone nut and nickel open-gear tuning machines reliably keep your sound buzz-free and in tune