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Acoustic's


Lewk
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depends on your budget, I bought a taylor gs mini 3/4 size suits my arthritic fingers a treat & sounds stunning, if you fancy something full size I have a rare Pilgrim electro accoustic made in leics in the early '80s, no case so collection only from sunny devon, better than an ovation in my opinion, a gift at £350 if you are interested

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IMO, the best acoustics for the money are Ibanez. My bands vocalist has an Ibanez EW20WNE and it's phenomenal for what he paid (£280-300 If i remember correctly). It's the acoustic we used on the track below for an idea of sound. Recorded with a Peavey dynamic mic on the soundhole and direct from the internal preamp.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOyMGZR-o_E[/media]

If you feel like really splashing out, i would go for a Taylor. One came up used in a cash generator near me for £200 and it had gone by the time i got paid, i was gutted.

Liam

Edited by LiamPodmore
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Go & try loads & take someone with you to get an audience opinion for how it sounds.
I went all round Glasgow a few years back to get an electro-acoustic. I tried Takamine, Yamaha, Ibanez, Ovation, Fender & a good few others in the @ £500 mark & none made me smile. Went to a wee shop in Falkirk, tried a Freshman & bought it there & then. Fantastic instrument.

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[quote name='LiamPodmore' timestamp='1339418122' post='1688084']
IMO, the best acoustics for the money are Ibanez. My bands vocalist has an Ibanez EW20WNE and it's phenomenal for what he paid (£280-300 If i remember correctly). It's the acoustic we used on the track below for an idea of sound. Recorded with a Peavey dynamic mic on the soundhole and direct from the internal preamp.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOyMGZR-o_E[/media]

If you feel like really splashing out, i would go for a Taylor. One came up used in a cash generator near me for £200 and it had gone by the time i got paid, i was gutted.

Liam
[/quote]

I've never seen a sieve used as a pop shield before :lol:

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[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1339423056' post='1688184']
Go & try loads & take someone with you to get an audience opinion for how it sounds.
I went all round Glasgow a few years back to get an electro-acoustic. I tried Takamine, Yamaha, Ibanez, Ovation, Fender & a good few others in the @ £500 mark & none made me smile. Went to a wee shop in Falkirk, tried a Freshman & bought it there & then. Fantastic instrument.
[/quote]

+1 for The Freshman, our guitarist/vocalist uses one too and it sounds sweet.

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Take out the amount you are prepared to pay in readies and go and hit some shops. When you find one that you [i]really[/i] like that is in your price range, buy it. Do not be tempted to keep going cos if you do you'll never buy one.

If you have a guitar playing friend take them with you and get them to play any that you're considering so you can stand and hear what an audience will hear, may be very different to what you heard when you were playing.

Also, not all guitars of the same model are created equal. I nearly bought an Avalon I really liked but was a few quid short so didn't, couple of weeks later I went back with the readies, the one I tried had gone but they had another of the same model, it stank!

Steve

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The Lorenzo L449 is nice and cheap at £89 and was voted "best guitar under £1000" in 2004 by Guitar Magazine.

[url="http://www.guitar.co.uk/guitars/acoustic/1307-lorenzo_l449_acoustic_guitar"]http://www.guitar.co.uk/guitars/acoustic/1307-lorenzo_l449_acoustic_guitar[/url]

At that price it's worth a try. I bought one a few years back and I like it; it is certainly decent. Although I don't know much about acoustics and I have played my friends Simon & Patrick which feels nicer.

I agree with the advice about taking some cash and trying some out.

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+100 for the freshman guitars, i have the pleasure of being the go-to man when my friends (and their friends) are looking for guitars and last year i had the pleasure of helping my best friend pick out his 30th birthday guitar, we had a budget of about 400 quid and we tried every guitar under that price, the brands that stood out were, (in no particular order)

Freshman, Tanglewood, Yamaha, Aria, Recording King, Art+lutherie, Simon and patrick, Vintage

the freshman was a remarkable instrument, picked it off the stand and gave it a go, couldn't believe how nice it was, then we asked the price, under 200 quid! we had it pegged as out of our budget.

that was just day one as well, on day 2 we headed to a little shop that we thought would be full of cheap rubbish, how wrong we were, they had a Blueridge, last one in stock, it was absolutely mindblowing, sounded, looked and played like a Martin OM-21, but at a shade over our budget, we played it for an hour, swapping between ourselves so we could both hear it from a players and an audience position. We haggled our best and walked out with it in a hard case (the best freebie ever)

the best advice has already been given, get the cash in your pocket and take a (guitar playing) friend, then play as many guitars as possible and haggle as much as you can, never assume you have to pay the ticket price, and if you do, make sure you get some freebies thrown in, at least some free strings and maybe a gigbag.

are you thinking of an acoustic or an electro-acoustic? i always advise to pick an acoustic according to how it sounds unplugged, my friend was looking for an elctro but the blueridge was a straight acoustic, i bought him a secondhand pickup from t'bay and had it fitted properly, sounds a million dollars. also personally i avoid cutaway acoustics, they never seem to sound as nice as the non-cutaway models.

I must also state that i've yet to find either a Taylor or a Takemine that i've liked, (at any price) i've played plenty over the years, from the most humble budget models right up to the limited edition ones, not one of them made me want to take it home. i spent the best part of 5 years looking at and playing top-end acoustics before i bought mine and even the top end Taylors didn't make me want to part with my money, i was all set to buy a Martin OM-21 when my local shop started stocking McIlroy guitars [url="http://www.mcilroyguitars.co.uk/"]http://www.mcilroyguitars.co.uk/[/url] and that was it, have been the proud owner of an AS25 for a little over 4 years now and it's still the finest guitar i've ever owned (although probably not your definition of a decent Budget) and it cost a little less than the Martin

Matt

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You don;t say what your definition of a decent price is, but at the budget end of the market I've never come across a bad yamaha f310.

Come to that, I've never come across any Yamaha accoustic that wasn't great for its price.

I've also had a couple of Washburns that were nice in the £200-300 range

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the yamaha's are very good at the budget end but if you can find an Aria i've always found then just a little nicer to play "out of the box"
(my first acoustic was a mid-range Yamaha and i still use it and love it,)

i'd look at second hand too, i bought a very nice solid top yamaha acoustic with a hiscox case a few years ago for 170 quid off the uni noiticeboard ,swapped it for my first bass guitar. i've found a couple of nice yamaha's in cash converters too for around 60 quid

Matt

Edited by Matt P
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Whatever you look at, there's a few things to remember:

Tone comes from the wood & the strings. If it sounds bad or not what you want then new strings *might* help, but there's no guarantee.
If looking at a new guitar, remember they will loosen up a little over time with playing. Beware of any strongly dominant tones/strings as they will likely become more dominant as it plays in.
Check intonation carefully. If the guitar is out then it will require major surgery to make it intonate acceptably. Check it all over.
Action is adjustable, but only conveniently in one direction - lower.
If looking at an electro-acoustic with bridge pickup, check that the string volumes are even - a common piezo fault is for one crystal to mute a little and unbalance the string-string volume.

HTH

Yamaha APXs seem pretty good value for money, are tough and sound fine through a PA.

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[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/50579126@N03/6127939256/][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/50579126@N03/6127939256/]Turner[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/50579126@N03/]Plastic Squirrel[/url], on Flickr

I bought this for about £300 10 years ago, it's a Turner, never seen another one since, but it's flipping brilliant for the cash, i expect if you found one 2nd hand it would be both cheap and good.

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Old Yamaha FG's are made of great woods , and go for far less than they should on the second hand market.
I also like the older Ovations , once the benchmark of Electro-acoustics used by Cat Stevens ,Paul Simon and Brian May.
Another good make is Larrivee, the basic models are great value ,as the money is spent on the woods rather than the decoration.

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