b'Martin CarthyMartin has been the Mister Big of the guitar in folk music for as long as I can remember. My main claim to fame at one point was having stood next to him in the gents toilets at Ian Campbells club in Birmingham. Later on, he called me a very rude word when I told him how much the Pack Leader guitars cost, my sad friends were very impressed by such things and bought me drinks. I once showed him how to set up a complicated trick shot on my pool table and pocket about 5 balls with one shot, I wonder if he remembers? Ask him to do his impression of a drunk with one foot stuck to the floor, its very good.I have looked after Martins original 00018 for the last 40 years, and over that time he has acquired quite a few instruments from me. He spotted the first Falstaff in my workshop one night and still carries it with him everywhere after thirty five years, even though he usually only plays one or two songs on it. It was followed by a carved top Lucetta mandolin which he says saved his life while he was going through a change of style, and a seven string Orsino which helped him to find a way of compressing a wide tuning range onto six strings. He also has a Pack Leader Electric with the Fylde Logo on it and has borrowed several other instruments for various periods of time. Martin broke many taboos in acoustic guitar, and set many musicians off in new directions, its almost entirely due to him that so many English guitarists now play in altered tunings and use more rhythmic accompaniments. He was a huge influence on my own guitar playing and musical tastes and certainly one of the bigger reasons why I took to making guitars in the first place. When he tours America, people dont understand his name, and call him Mountain McCarthy. He has never learnt to drive, so Bernard Wrigley thinks he should be called Martin Trainthy.Martin Carthy with his Fylde. Martin first saw this guitar in my workshop in 1976, it beckoned to him, and he took it home. He has carried it to most of his gigs ever since, sometimes it was his only performing guitar while I had his old 00018 in pieces on my bench.53'