With the Martin D-18 Street Legend , the US manufacturer presents a traditional dreadnought Western guitar made of the finest materials in a decidedly tasteful look. For a well-balanced sound
Especially the choice of the top material is fundamental for a fast and perfect sound development, which is why the manufacturer deliberately chooses a spruce top. Due to its fine structure and high vibration behavior, it has been used for decades to build the finest musical instruments. Thanks to a Forward-Shifted-Scalloped-X bracing and a gauzy varnish finish , the high-quality spruce wood can move freely and produces a fast-responding tone that gives the instrument a powerful expression in the mid and treble frequencies and a long-lasting fade in the overtones. An Aged Satin finish skillfully sets off the even and tight grain of the wood, while a simple delineating Black binding, a matching Tortoise pickguard and a delicate Multi-Stripe rosette add visual detail to the overall look.
To add a warm saturation to the overall sound, the Martin D-18 Satin features a high-quality mahogany body whose grain creates golden reflections depending on the viewing angle and lighting conditions. Because of its even texture, the tropical wood colors the sound in the midrange frequencies with a gentle warmth that adds a soothing note to the overall tone and perfectly complements the bright frequencies of the top wood. The right varnish also plays a major role for the thin back material, allowing the raw material to vibrate freely and promoting a fast and powerful response. A thin Style 18 backstrip almost imperceptibly divides the opened back wood and emphasizes the symmetry of the fine grain in a very aesthetic way. In combination with the dark binding, a smooth transition is created between the individual components of the entire body.
The mahogany neck equipped with a Modified-Low-Oval neck profile ensures a high level of playing comfort here. Thanks to its carefully crafted bone nut with a width of 44.45 mm and a compensated bridge in lay, it not only intonates perfectly over the entire scale length of 645 mm, but is also easy and clean to play right up to the highest of the 20 frets. A fine ebony fingerboard with dot inlays perfectly rounds out the neck construction in terms of function and value, and visually harmonizes extremely well with the other materials of the body. The characteristic Martin headstock is equipped with open nickel tuners, which, in combination with the venerable script old-style overlay, discreetly refer to the almost 200 years of the company's existence and allow the player to tune precisely with their smooth-running tuning vanes.