Pre-War Guitars Co.
Pre-War Guitar Company Herringbone Brazilian 2021, Natural
2021 · Listed by Carter Vintage Guitars · Nashville, TN
Photos hot-linked from Carter Vintage Guitars’s site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Adirondack Torrefied
- Back / Sides
- Brazilian Rw
- Neck
- Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- Dread
- Scale length
- 25.4"
- Nut width
- 1.77"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- Preowned
- Year
- 2021
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 Carter Vintage Guitars
Carter Vintage Guitars sits at 606 8th Avenue South in Nashville, opened November 2012 by Walter and Christie Carter — each with twenty-five years in the vintage guitar business before they put their names on a shop. Walter spent a decade as Gibson's in-house historian and has authored a dozen books on vintage instruments, including "Gibson: 100 Years of an American Icon" and "Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars"; Christie's focus was the high-end vintage market. The shop's reputation is built on full-disclosure transparency around condition, originality, and provenance — a standard set early and still held to. The catalog leads with vintage — pre-war Martins, original-finish Gibsons, vintage Fender — but the new-boutique acoustic side runs deep alongside it: Collings, Bourgeois, Santa Cruz, Huss & Dalton, Goodall, McPherson, Lowden, and Furch are anchor brands, with a rotating long tail of smaller US luthiers (Boucher, Pre-War Guitars Co., Beauregard, Sexauer, Tippin, Kevin Ryan, and others) passing through. Carter became part of TNAG Global in 2022 — the parent holding company that also acquired Norman's Rare Guitars in early 2026 — but day-to-day curation has stayed centered on the original Carter team. Worldwide shipping; in-person browsing on 8th Avenue South.
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