The Story of Willie Nelson's Guitar Trigger

Trigger: How Willie Nelson Got His Martin Over the Phone

Willie Nelson has played the same guitar for more than fifty years. It’s a 1969 Martin N-20, a nylon-string classical, serial number 242830. He calls it Trigger, after Roy Rogers’ horse. If you’ve seen Willie play, you know the one. It has a big hole worn through the top next to the bridge and is covered in scratched-in autographs.

Martin is best known for steel-string guitars, so a nylon-string Martin is already a bit unusual. How Willie ended up with this one is a pretty good story.

A drunk, a busted Baldwin and a phone call

Before Trigger, Willie was playing a Baldwin 800C, an electric classical the piano company had given him along with a C1 amp. He didn’t love the guitar itself. What he loved was the sound from its Prismatone pickup, which had a little ceramic sensor under each string. It let him play a nylon-string onstage with a band and actually be heard.

In 1969 he was playing the John T. Floore Country Store in Helotes, Texas, and left the Baldwin in its case on the stage. A drunk stepped on it. Two guys from his band drove it to Nashville to Shot Jackson, the pedal steel player and repairman who ran Sho-Bud.

Jackson said it couldn’t be fixed. But he had a Martin N-20 in the shop and said he could move the pickup over to it. According to Texas Monthly, Willie asked over the phone, “Is it any good?” Jackson told him, “Well, Martins are known for good guitars.” The price was $750. Willie had just paid the same for a roping horse, so he said, “That’s pretty cool,” and bought it sight unseen.

Guitar.com reports that Jackson didn’t just move the pickup. He took the bridge off the brand-new Martin and put the Baldwin’s bridge on, since it was already drilled for the pickup. He kept playing through Baldwin amps, too.

Why the hole is there

The N-20 was built to be played fingerstyle, so it never came with a pickguard. Willie plays it with a pick and digs in hard. He’s a huge Django Reinhardt fan and that’s the sound he’s chasing. Over the years his pick and fingers wore right through the spruce.

The hole was already starting by 1974, when he was the first act on Austin City Limits. He told Texas Monthly, “When I saw the hole coming in there, I didn’t panic or anything.” He said the guitar he played growing up had a big, round hole too.

Austin luthier Mark Erlewine has looked after Trigger since the 1970s. He’s added mahogany braces under the top to keep the area around the hole from collapsing, re-glued the top where sweat from Willie’s arm has loosened it, and replaced the tuners more than a dozen times. Willie has a habit of fiddling with the D string peg between songs, and it wears out the gears.

Erlewine told Vintage Guitar that many of the frets are “razor thin,” but Willie doesn’t want them fixed. “If he can plug it in, tune it, and play it, he’s happy.” When they first met in 1977, Willie told him, “As long as this guitar keeps going, I’ll keep going.”

A rare Martin, too

Martin tried several times to get into the classical market and none of those guitars sold very well. According to Vintage Guitar, the first version of the N-20 had a shorter scale and the older Martin-style peghead, and only 277 were made with those specs. That makes Trigger a pretty rare guitar even before you count who owns it.

One detail I liked: the N-20 has 12 frets clear of the body. My Martin is a 12-fret too, and there’s a reason people love that design for picking and writing songs.

Trigger has been through a lot. When Willie’s house outside Nashville burned down in 1970, the Martin was one of the few things that came out of it. Years later, when he owed the IRS millions, he recorded solo versions of his songs with just Trigger, and that album helped him pay off the debt.

Willie summed it up to Texas Monthly better than I can. “Trigger’s like me,” he said. “Old and beat-up.”

Most of us swap guitars every few years looking for something better. Willie found his sound in 1969 and stuck with it, hole and all.