Preston Thompson Guitars
D-MA, 2026, Sunburst
2026 · Listed at Carter Vintage Guitars · Nashville, TN
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at Carter Vintage Guitars’ site.
$6,950
Last seen 3h ago on dealer site
Photos hot-linked from Carter Vintage Guitars’ site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Adirondack Spruce
- Back / Sides
- Mahogany
- Neck
- Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- Dreadnought
- Scale length
- 25.4"
- Nut width
- 1 3/4"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Condition
- New
- Year
- 2026
Preston Thompson Guitars
Preston Thompson Guitars build handmade flattops in Sisters, Oregon — the shop Preston Thompson founded after decades studying pre-war Martin construction. Preston came up under Charles Fox at his Vermont guitar school in the 1970s and then through Randy Wood's Old Time Pickin' Parlor in Nashville, but his defining education was the years he spent with bluegrass great Charles Sawtelle measuring his collection of pre-war Martin dreadnoughts — measurements that still drive the shop's bracing patterns and top graduations today. The instruments were chosen as winner's prize at the National Flatpicking Championships three years running, and players including Eric Bibb and Sawtelle himself put them on records. Preston passed away in 2019, and the team he had spent years training continued the work in the same Sisters shop using the same methods and the same hands.
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.
