| "Here's a little damage that appears to have been rectified with a half-inch bolt and some Superglue," Hawkins said with a laugh, pointing to a section on the underside of the guitar. "It's taken some abuse, just like the rest of us."
For the first 25 years or so, Nelson refused to let anyone work on Trigger. Finally, when it seemed that the guitar could no longer keep pace with Nelson, or the life of the road, a group of technicians persuaded him that surgery was overdue. Someone basically dumped a can of epoxy on the guitar to hold it together, said Martin Guitar's Dick Boak, a manager of artist relations and limited editions.
"It was not a conventional repair," Boak said. "We would never do that."
Nelson's pledge, that he would hang it up when Trigger gave out once carried mighty odds, and today he still insists that "the guitar will outlive me." In truth, though, it is a race against time, one that no one in his traveling family -- little sister Bobbie and 21 other musicians and roadies -- wants to see over.
"God, I hope it doesn't ever end," Hawkins said, affixing Nelson's sweat-stained, macrame red-white-and-blue shoulder strap to Trigger. "I'm 48 years old. How the hell am I going to get a new job now?"
Nelson's band mates joked that if one of them died, the never- ending tour would continue without a hitch.
"We would just be replaced," said harmonica player Mickey Rafael, who has played with Nelson for 30 years. "But if Trigger goes, that's it. Game over."
Many guitarists swear by older guitars -- Nelson paid $750 for Trigger, but pre-World War II Martins can fetch prices upward of $150,000 -- and their beliefs, often seen as superstition, are founded in science, Boak said.
After a few months, a guitar's lacquer loses its solvents, opening its sound. After five years, a guitar's wooden parts finish settling into place, and "the instrument gets used to vibrating as one thing," Boak said. Nelson is one of the few musicians to realize the third and final step in a guitar's evolution. After 30 years, the wood becomes dry and brittle, and its sound becomes deep and whole, Boak said.
"Every day I like to hit a few licks to see if the old fingers are still working," Nelson said. "And I really believe it's still getting better every day. People know exactly what guitar it is when they hear it, even before they hear me."
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