Anyone else infatuated with their Acoustic?

[Larry Mal]

I played a couple of my guitars yesterday, both in the DADEAC# tuning that I've been talking about. One was the new Guild F-30 and the other my Gibson J-29, one of which was posted upthread.

A lot of differences between the two, the Guild is long scale, it's an Orchestra Model shape (so the body is thinner than a Gibson Jumbo shape), and the body is mahogany.

By comparison the Gibson is the larger bodied guitar, short scale, and has rosewood back and sides.

The spruce is Adirondack on one and Sitka in the other, and honestly, based on what I've read about the woods, there might be a difference there.

That is, they say that Adirondack spruce stays clear at higher volumes than does Sitka- you know how when you strum a guitar hard the sound can kind of "saturate"? Well, on the guitar forums, they say that Adirondack tends to do that less than does Sitka.

This is not me saying that, by the way- I don't know shit, and I am not going to pretend to. But I can say that the Guild stays clear and open much more than does the Gibson.

This is not a bad thing, this Gibson has that quality that Gibson Jumbos often have, a darker, kind of melancholy elegance to them. I was fingerpicking it and thinking how nice it would sound with a microphone close to it, nice and intimate.

It's a cool sound, Dok, and I can't wait to hear what you make of it. Martins tend to have this dominant attack to them- the CEO 7 included from what I can tell- and while that's not a bad thing, you get a much different attack and timbre with something like a Gibson J-45. To me it can be a more intimate sound.

But the Guild was just strong all around. It does have a more Martin sound, not at all surprising, considering it is designed to be a direct Martin imitation. Clean, powerful, open, chiming... just an all around winner. You could really do anything with it.

Not that you couldn't with the J-29, you get to a point with acoustic guitars and while some are stronger than others in certain areas, the limitation is usually yourself.

I don't know. Just a few thoughts.

[Dok]

Interesting thoughts, Larry!

My experience so far with the CEO-7 is that while it has an Adirondack top and it is a very loud guitar, especially for its size, I cannot strum very hard without the guitar sounding bad. It's always been one of the issues I had with it, that I'm a real heavy-handed kind of player and the Martin punishes me for it. It needs a light delicate touch for it to bloom and display its quite lovely sound, which is actually very focused on the fundamentals and not a lot of overtones.

This J-45 is very harmonically rich, though, especially in the top end, and while it doesn't yet have all the volume of the smaller-bodied CEO-7, it has a much richer and deeper low end due to the deeper body and I can strum as hard as I please and it will still sound good, and it also responds well to a more gentle approach. I also have to strum it much, much closer to the fretboard, like all the way over the soundhole to coax that rich deep bass sound from it.

I was really hoping to be able to get rid of the CEO (or swap it for a J-100 ) once I got the J45 as an all-rounder, but the neck on it is like my platonic ideal of what a guitar neck should be and it still feels like home at the moment. And I know you're certainly one who would advocate for more than one acoustic in the house.

[tammyw]

How many acoustic guitars should a person have? If they wanted to limit it only one, what's the safest bet, Guild dreadnought? Stick with buying new to avoid issues? Go with whatever is the most expensive you can afford? Gibsons with bird motifs? In the mid-upper price range the stores here seem to have a bunch Taylors with cut-aways and electronics, or else mostly lower-end imports.

[Dok]

If you don't currently have one, one is a good place to start! But you have to find one that feels good and speaks to you. What style of electric do you play? I kept insisting that I needed smaller-bodied guitars for years, decades, even, when the truth is that they really don't fit my playing style (I'm a heavy strummer), and it turns out that dreads and jumbos are really more in line with what I expect/want from an acoustic. Skip electronics if you have the option in my opinion, it's wild that the expensive Gibsons I've been wanting to buy for so long have them and then I have to pay to get them removed.

By the way, for anyone looking to buy a great new acoustic guitar for not much money, I can't recommend Yamahas enough. They've been making guitars longer than anyone and they know what the fuck they are doing. I don't own one but I've been consistently impressed by them every time. If I had just started there way back when I'd probably have saved myself a lot of time and money.

[JSett]

How many acoustic guitars should a person have? If they wanted to limit it only one, what's the safest bet, Guild dreadnought? Stick with buying new to avoid issues? Go with whatever is the most expensive you can afford? Gibsons with bird motifs? In the mid-upper price range the stores here seem to have a bunch Taylors with cut-aways and electronics, or else mostly lower-end imports.

In the 27 years I've played guitar I've only ever had one acoustic at a time. And I've only had 3 in that time. I've just bought whatever felt and sounded good regardless of cost. My favourite was my last one before my current (just dying) Yamaha which was a 1938 Harmony Marvel B. I was terrified of taking it out the house though as it was a beautiful and fragile old thing so, very regretfully, I sold it on.

From what I can ascertain from advice here is to buy new, or at least recent, unless the vintage example is verified as bona fide solid as a rock and already had any necessary maintenance done.

I went to my local shop a couple of years back to test new Martin's and they all had horrible thin neck profiles bar a weird Eric Clapton custom model that was 4k or something ridiculous. I tried a bunch of Taylors too and hated them all. Anything that looked modern (cutaways) looked distasteful to my eyes.

I gig with my acoustics so electronics are a plus for me although I know a bunch of people hate them.

I guess you gotta think what you want out of it. Are you going to be going up above the 12th much? If so, cutaways will make your life easier. Playing out with it? Electronics for sure. Once you've got the essentials covered regards requirements then it's just a case of going and finding one that sounds and feels good and is in your budget. That could be a $400 Takamine or a $3000 Martin. If it resonates with you then that's all that matters.

FWIW, my 73 FG-160 cost me less than £100 and I've had many, many years of play out of it and loved it dearly.

[Larry Mal]

How many acoustic guitars should a person have? If they wanted to limit it only one, what's the safest bet, Guild dreadnought? Stick with buying new to avoid issues? Go with whatever is the most expensive you can afford? Gibsons with bird motifs? In the mid-upper price range the stores here seem to have a bunch Taylors with cut-aways and electronics, or else mostly lower-end imports.

if you don't know what you want, get a dreadnaught. If you don't already have a preconception about what you want the guitar to be as far as brand, Guild is great value for the money. A Guild D-40 is Guild's version of the ubiquitous mahogany bodied dreadnaught, and can be found at all price points.

As far as how many, well, that's very personal. I've had long periods with just one and I now have a bunch. I like to tune the guitars to different things, so having more than one tends to help with that.

[DrQuasar]

Get a Yamaha C40. Nylon is where it's at! I've played a couple of the Ortega "slim neck" models if you want a narrower nut width and they're also decent. But just get the Yamaha C40.

[sal paradise]

I was doing my regular noodling of Romeo & Juliet earlier. Decided to actually leave it in open G. Never really played on that tuning. Seemed to work out like I was playing drop D.

The G45 seems to love the lower tuning. Far more aggressive. But just messing around like that I kinda wrote 2 songs in 10 minutes. I need to remember to just mess about more often

[Larry Mal]

But just messing around like that I kinda wrote 2 songs in 10 minutes. I need to remember to just mess about more often

That's what I do. New tunings make me find things again, so it can prevent me from doing the same thing over and over.

Head on down to open C... C-G-C-G-C-E (low to high). That's where it's at.

[gishuk]

Gibsons with bird motifs?

This is the way

All these issues Johnny and Larry are talking about has been whats put me off ever buying a vintage acoustic, which is a shame as I think theres probably something to be said for older acoustics sounding 'better' (whatever that means). But even for me as someone who has no qualms with buying vintage electrics from online sellers and plays pretty much exclusively vintage Fenders, it just looks like a minefield.

That being said I do actually own a late 60s/early 70s Eko Ranger, but it was very cheap at the time I bought it, and with the neck being a Fender style bolt on any concerns about neck resets can be fixed with a bit of credit card in the neck pocket

[Larry Mal]

I was really hoping to be able to get rid of the CEO (or swap it for a J-100 ) once I got the J45 as an all-rounder, but the neck on it is like my platonic ideal of what a guitar neck should be and it still feels like home at the moment. And I know you're certainly one who would advocate for more than one acoustic in the house.

No idea what to tell you about the trade, but I do have a J-100:



And I'll bet your CEO-7 is louder than it, also.

[Dok]

I was really hoping to be able to get rid of the CEO (or swap it for a J-100 ) once I got the J45 as an all-rounder, but the neck on it is like my platonic ideal of what a guitar neck should be and it still feels like home at the moment. And I know you're certainly one who would advocate for more than one acoustic in the house.

No idea what to tell you about the trade, but I do have a J-100:



And I'll bet your CEO-7 is louder than it, also.

Yeah they are generally pretty tight-sounding! Which is why I'd never buy a Gibson Jumbo without playing it first, really gotta find one that suits me just right.

[Larry Mal]

Yeah they are generally pretty tight-sounding! Which is why I'd never buy a Gibson Jumbo without playing it first, really gotta find one that suits me just right.

It certainly is a nice instrument! Sounds great. It's something I debated returning, you can see it's got like no saddle on there, plus some other weird stuff. But I only paid like $1k for it, so I kept it.

About five years ago I could find all kinds of excellent acoustics for around $1k. I kind of loaded up.

[Dok]

Oh wow. You aren't going to find one these days for much less than double that. For $1k I'd take a gamble online.

[Larry Mal]

Oh wow. You aren't going to find one these days for much less than double that. For $1k I'd take a gamble online.

The wood is bubinga on the back and sides, and I think that's got to be the least popular of them all. They made the Bozeman J-100s in a lot of different woods, with the usual maple, but also in rosewood and mahogany, this bubinga, and I'm even seeing here that they used sycamore on some of the very early ones (this is worth looking at).