Pre-War Guitars Co.
Herringbone Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar, Level 1 Aging
Listed by Elderly Instruments · Lansing, MI
Photos hot-linked from Elderly Instruments’s site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Adirondack
- Back / Sides
- Brazilian Rw
- Neck
- Honduran Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- Dread
- Scale length
- 25.4"
- Nut width
- 1.75"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- New
About Pre-War Guitars Co.
Pre-War Guitars Co. operates out of Roxboro, North Carolina, founded in 2014 by Wes Lambe and Ben Maschal. The shop builds vintage-inspired acoustics using 1930s Martin construction conventions — dovetail neck joints, hot hide glue, torrefied tops and bracing — with one deliberate modern concession in the adjustable truss rod. What sets Pre-War apart is the finish. Every instrument leaves with an ultra-thin checked nitrocellulose lacquer at one of three distressing levels, from minimal "case-kept" handling marks (Level 1) through honest play-wear (Level 2) up to a full road-warrior treatment (Level 3). The aging isn't theater — Lambe and Maschal argue, and the recordings back them up, that a thin checked finish lets the top vibrate freely and produces a drier, more open voice than a polished new guitar can manage. Annual production caps around 150 instruments. The customer list runs from Tommy Emmanuel, Molly Tuttle, and Jackson Browne to David Grier, Zac Brown, the Steep Canyon Rangers, and Andrew Marlin — none of them paid endorsers, which is the kind of detail Pre-War puts on their website.
About Elderly Instruments
Elderly Instruments has been a Lansing, Michigan institution since 1972 — founder Stan Werbin opened the shop in East Lansing with fifteen used instruments and no cash register, then spent fifty-plus years growing it into one of the largest specialty music retailers in the country while keeping it family-run (Stan still leads; daughter Lillian is the next generation). The store moved to its current home in a renovated old lodge hall in Lansing's Old Town district in 1983 and runs today with about forty employees, many tenured 20+ years. Their catalog is famously broad — Taylor, Martin, Fender, and Yamaha alongside Collings, Bourgeois, Lowden, McPherson, Santa Cruz, Goodall, and Atkin — and the in-house repair shop, a separate 3,000-square-foot space with a spray booth, inspects and sets up nearly every instrument they sell. A specialty music store that's outlasted every shift in retail and stays known for its repair expertise and customer care.
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