Martin employee guitar without truss rod !

[Playguitar]

Hi, I acquired a Martin guitar which was made by am employee. It's probably made quite recently. The only problem is that it wasn't finished.
There is a hole for the truss rod [Thru the brace and into the neck], but alas the truss rod itself is mia. It's a beautifully made guitar but needs to be finished. also, what's the best under saddle piezo system to electrify my baby?
Can anyone illuminate me as to whether a new truss rod would be easy to install?
Thanks for all replies.

[Paul Hostetter]

It would be a major project to do it: remove the fingerboard, install the rod, put it back together and clean up the finish mess, probably including a plane and refret of the board.

There are a lot of people who don't really think an adjustable trussrod is all that necessary. Martin in fact offers some models without them. Before going any further, you need to determine if the neck has some other kind of reinforcement inside the neck. It could be a T-bar or a square steel tube, both of which Martin used to use. You could figure this out by feeling the weight of the neck, or with a supermagnet. It could also have an ebony or a carbon fiber bar in there, which you wouldn't be able to detect without taking it apart. Just because this person used available production parts, like a top brace with the wrench hole in it, doesn't mean the rod was inadvertently left out.

Are you sure this was an employee guitar rather than a kit? Is there any compelling problem with the presumably unreinforced neck?

[Russell Vance]

Best value for money at the bottom end of the top end stuff is the Fishman Matrix or the latest Fishman Infinity (volume and tone controls plus a bass contour switch for enhancing bottom end or cutting it on sound stages) - the original Martin Thinline Plus system that Martin uses is simply a re-badged Fishman Matrix. I have installed a lot of the new Infinity systems and am impressed by their flexibility with the tone /shaping ranges.
Don't know about the type of truss rod that Martin uses - anybody ? Rusty.