Mikael Åkerfeldt and Martin have teamed up for a signature OM acoustic guitar that the Opeth frontman insists is even better than anything the storied Pennsylvanian brand has at their museum.
The holy grail acoustic from the 1800s, Kurt Cobain’s "haunted" D-18, aka Grandpa? Åkerfeldt has played them both – reluctantly in the case of the 1800s heritage survivor, for fear he’d break it – and no, none come close. He says his OM signature guitar is better than them all, and looking at it, you can see why he has fallen hard for it.
“Is this the best guitar I’ve ever played?” he says. “Including the ones in your museum? I believe so.”
Åkerfeldt started playing Martin acoustics regularly around Opeth’s Damnation-era, when he swapped out his old Seagull for one. He co-developed this OM with the luthiers at Martin, and knows his stuff.
He used to work at a Stockholm guitar store that was a Martin dealer, and spent the downtime playing them all.
“I was playing a lot and writing a lot for our second album [Morningrise] and developing my technique as an acoustic guitar player,” he told MusicRadar in 2010. “That’s something that made a lot of difference to me as a songwriter, guitar player and musician overall. The years in that store helped me to develop our sound.”
Åkerfeldt joins the likes of Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa, David Gilmour, Johnny Marr and John Mayer in the Martin signature artist roster. The thought of it tickles him.
“To be rubbing shoulders with so many esteemed musicians who’ve been graced with the honor of having their own Martin signature guitar is beyond comprehension,” he says. “But enough of that! I’m sat here with this incredible instrument that resonates through the walls of my old house every time I pluck a string. It is truly a beautiful instrument with a beautiful sound.”
This would be many players’ idea of the ideal Martin guitar, a modern-day instrument constructed with an old-world sensibility, with the VTS torrefied solid spruce on top, buttressed by scalloped Adirondack spruce bracing – again, given the VTS treatment, giving it the lungs and sound of an instrument with some decades of play behind it.
The back and sides are constructed of Guatemalan rosewood, with the back a three-piece construction with an East Indian rosewood insert – it is a work of art – and then come the subtle aesthetic flourishes. This is understated without being dowdy.
Åkerfeldt has resisted the urge to have golden tuners. Instead, we have black open-gear tuners with ‘butterbean’ buttons. We have herringbone purfling and flamed maple binding. He has gone for roman numeral inlays on that pristine ebony fingerboard. That Golden Era block headstock logo is just too cool.
But it’s not all vintage, vintage, vintage. This, says Martin, is the first “traditional build” to feature one of its Low Profile Velocity neck shapes – a speedy neck profile that was designed to emulate the slinkier feel of an electric guitar on acoustic, just the thing for negotiating Opeth’s tricksy prog-metal compositions.
Limited to 74 units worldwide, priced £/$6,999, including a hard-shell Harptone guitar case, the Mikael Åkerfeldt OM Signature is available now. See Martin Guitar for details.
