Counterfeiters Beware! Martin Guitars Have Had Enough

C.F. Martin CEO Chris Martin IV (right) with GI writer Brady Lavin at Summer NAMM 2011

By: Staff

A single Martin guitar can take up to sixteen weeks to produce, and is made with the highest quality materials available by skilled craftsmen and women, who pour their entire selves into their work. Then why have some people bought Martin guitars that were thrown together in two weeks with cheap woods and metals and no care? They aren’t actually Martin guitars.

Check out our feature on Martin’s new guitars at Summer NAMM 2011!

C.F. Martin and Co. have been noticing that counterfeiters have been targeting their guitars, making them on the cheap in China and selling them worldwide as genuine Martin acoustic guitars. In response, the revered guitar makers have teamed up with Applied DNA Sciences to create a “DNA” tag that will be present on every authentic Martin guitar, making sure that every Martin sold is the real deal.

Chris Martin IV, of the sixth generation of Martins to run the company, is optimistic about the project. “People around the world know the high level of quality that is inherent in each and every guitar that features the C. F. Martin logo, and protecting our intellectual property is of vital importance, as we face new counterfeit-related challenges at home and abroad,” he said of the new partnership with Applied DNA Sciences.

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The security experts over at Applied have extensive experience with this kind of issue, having created authentication methods for a variety of products, including “English wool, Mexican police uniforms, world-famous luxury goods, and, in a pilot for the U.S Department of Defense, microchips bound for the U.S military,” according to a press release.

The counterfeiting of high-end luxury products like Martin guitars is a very lucrative operation, often leading to higher profit margins than even drug trafficking, according to Applied DNA Sciences. Historically, their security measures have been extremely successful, leading to a 100% conviction rate of counterfeiters when their authentications have been used as evidence. Hopefully this makes for fewer counterfeit Martins out there, allowing customers to get what they paid for and Martin to concentrate on making the best acoustic guitars out there as they’ve been doing for 175 years instead of worrying about crooks infringing their copyrights.