What Year Was My Martin Made?
So, you looked at my article Identify Your Vintage Martin and determined what Style your Martin is. And now, like the dozens of people who send me emails, you want to figure out what year that ukulele was manufactured. While each of the specific styles have their own characteristics that can help identify their age, this article describes some of the common factors across the styles that can narrow down the time frames. And, as always, there are exceptions to the general rules. Specifics by style will be found in future articles. Fret marker location. When they began making ukuleles, Martin marked the frets at 3, 5 and 9. In 1920, they moved the fret marker at 9 to the 10th fret. The inside stamp. The inside stamp ran parallel to the strings until mid-1916, at which point they turned it to run parallel to the interior brace. If the…