Rory's Guitars
My signature model guitar is the product of many months of discussions, designs, brainstorming and nit-picking. It is truly the ultimate combination of everything I have always loved and admired about Martin Guitars. We combined the finest materials, classic body shape and size, and added entirely unique ornamentation- particularly on the headstock and fingerboard, where Dick Boak of Martin Guitars and I designed a mother of pearl highway with a train crossing, road signs, and of course my signature. That's a 1930's Hudson Terraplane car on the headstock to celebrate one of my favorite Robert Johnson songs "Terraplane Blues." In addition to the cool yet subtle ornamentation, the guitar has been thoughtfully created for a man or a woman, a rowdy player or a mellow finger picker- all ranges of styles and approaches- from slide, raucous slamming by a blues player's strong hands, to the gentler touch of a finger picker.
To say that I can never properly express my gratitude to the wonderful folks at Martin Guitars- good friend artist rep Dick Boak who gave months of time, energy and artistic brilliance to bring this guitar to life, Ric Forero, head of string marketing, who always came to my area shows and first invited me to endorse my favorite strings, owner C.F. Martin IV for allowing us to create, and the many folks in manufacturing and sales- would be an understatement. I am truly walking on air!
100% of my portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. It's only a small contribution to a very large problem; that of neglected, abandoned and abused animals- but every little bit helps.
The ads for Martin Guitar Strings came out in '97.. (see page 53 of the October '97 issue of Guitar Player). You can't see my face too well, mostly my hair, (so what else is new), but it does say who I am and it is a full page in color. My Martin guitar kicks bootie and since I was using the strings long before they asked me to do the ads, nothing has changed except for the amount of strings in my bus and the new gold strings, which are also too good to be true. The ads appeared in: (1997) Guitar Player: October, Acoustic Guitar: October, Guitar World: September, Fingerstyle Guitar: September/October, Bluegrass Unlimited: August & September, Dirty Linen: August/September, Performing Songwriter: July/August & September/October issues, Music Paper: August/September, etc. There are also display posters in stores picturing Eric Clapton, Rory Block, and Marty Stuart. They say "The best only string with the best." Great company!
