Great Acoustics: Jason Isbell’s 1940 Martin 0-17  

Jason Isbell owns some prized vintage guitars, such as a 1934 Martin 000-28 that he calls the best acoustic guitar he’s ever played. But when it came to recording his solo acoustic album Foxes in the Snow, he turned to this smaller and plainer Martin 0-17, a recent acquisition from Retrofret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn, New York.

Listed at $30, the 0-17 was nearly the bottom of the line in Martin’s 1940 catalog—only the 0-15, a very similar model with a less glossy finish, was cheaper, at $25. Compared with guitars like the 00-18 ($50), 000-28 ($90), D-28 ($100), and D-45 ($200), the 0-17 was a more affordable offering for lean times. Martin didn’t skimp on the woods in the 0-17, with its high-grade mahogany body, top, and neck and rosewood fingerboard and bridge, but kept the trim very simple. The body has no binding, and fingerboard dots and a small soundhole ring are about the only decorations. Isbell’s 0-17 has the original Waverly tuners and chipboard case.

When Isbell first went into the studio for Foxes in the Snow, he made some test tracks with a prewar Martin D-18. “Beautiful guitar, sounded fantastic, but it just ate up the sonic space,” he says. “Where I sing, frequency wise, is right where a guitar hits when you’re playing chords down at the end of the neck, and I felt like it was getting lost. The co-producer, Gena Johnson, felt the same way, like it was just too much guitar for what we needed—for my voice in particular, not for everybody’s.”

By contrast, the modest 0-17 was just right. “That little mahogany Martin felt really perfect,” he says. “It fit right in the space where we wanted a guitar to be, and it plays so well.”

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.