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The So You Want to Buy A Guitar FAQ Should I Buy an Electric or Acoustic Guitar? What Are the Different Types of Acoustic Guitars? What Are the Different Types of Electric Guitars? What are Some Unusual Kinds of Acoustic Guitars? What are Some Kinds of Less Common Electric Guitars? What Kind of Acoustic Guitar Do You Recommend Buying? What Kind of Electric Guitar Do You Recommend Buying? How About If I'm Looking For an Unusual Type of Guitar? Should I Buy A New or Used Guitar?
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Warning, long story and long load times for all the images for those of you connecting with a modem... I started out on acoustic guitar and move and forth to it this day. They're great accompaniment tools for singing or for just playing in the sun. Like I say elsewhere on this site, Eric Clapton and Robert Johnson both may have done great versions of Crossroads, but it for sure that Robert Johnson didn't jump on no freight train carrying a Les Paul and a Marshall stack! The oldest acoustic guitar I still play is a Cortez 12 string that bought from in a Musicland store on Hennepin Ave back in the 70's. After awhile I got an old DeArmond pickup (you see these in the soundholes of a lot of non-descript guitars being played by 50's bluesmen) at a warehouse closeout and put that in. Cortez it turns out is the brand name that Cort used before it used Cort. It's all laminated wood, but it's stood up well over the years.
The next acoustic I bought was a 1970's Japanese made Maya Martin 000 copy from the Podium in Dinkytown USA. I was trying to play with a piano player with very little if any PA assistance at the time, and this thing had the best "cutting" treble of anything I could afford at the time. It has a solid top and laminated rosewood sides and back. It's still a decent finger-style guitar, but I don't play finger-style much. Interestingly, the Podium was then as now a very hip place, but there weren't a lot of 000 sized instruments around then.
I used to look for damaged and therefore low priced instruments to play and perhaps fix up a bit back in those days. I soon found that I could do a lot with an electric that needed something, but that I was no acoustic guitar repairman. Here is a wierd nylon 12 string I got over 30 years ago thinking I could fix it up. It really needs a neck reset, and I sure don't know how to do that kind of work.
The next guitar to be obtained by the Abused Guitar Protection Society was this Maderia dreadnaught. Maderia was a Guild import line (like Sigma was and is for Martin) of no great distinction, but this guitar had been though the wars. The top was partway shoved in and the bridge was nearly torn off. I managed to stabilize the top but could do nothing about the bridge whcih had torn up the wood beneath it, so I put a tailpiece on it a and stuck a "Texas Transducer" (a sort of bargain-basement Barcus Berry) and played it. Currently I have it strung in "Nashville Tuning" with the high strings from a 12 string set.
Many years went by before I purchased another acoustic. I spend most of my time playing the Maya 000 copy but I figured someday I'd get an guitar that plays as well but had a pickup for playing with electric instruments. The inexpensive solution I found was this used Applause AE28. It's cost a basic under-saddle pickup, a shallow bowl body, and a pretty nice neck for a cheap instrument.
Well after twenty years of playing acoustic guitar where I bought these and other instruments, but except for the Maya I really didn't have anything that sounded all that good, and the Maya's sound was little on the small side. I'd learned that a) I wasn't much of an acoustic guitar repair man, and b) that unlike a cheap electric there was little you could do to make a poor sounding acoustic sound better. I started to come around the to the realization that I could sort of play this instrument, but that it would sound a little better if the guitar I was playing was better. About the same time I starting thinking like this I came upon this used deal on a Seagull S6 Folk guitar. It played great and unlike my Maya, you could really dig in with a flat pick and not have the sound break up. It has a unique body size, a little bigger than 000 shape and deeper by a fair margin than a 000 instrument. I one I bought was well played in (note the "partway to Willie Nelson" pick wear on the face of the guitar). Seagull makes a nice instrument, and they are great deals new or used.
Next up I decided to give in to convention and get a dreadnaught. I shopped a bit and went back and forth between a Seagull S6, the Larrivee D02, the Martin D15 and the Martin DM1. I couldn't find a Seagull in town with a spruce instead of cedar top (I was looking for conventional tones here, and spruce is the "rule"), and I didn't like the Larrivee that was in stock. I liked the D15 a whole lot, but it sounded a lot like my Seagull Folk. Similarly, I played a couple of Larrivee OM-2 guitars that I liked, but they sounded like my Maya. I decided that the Martin DM1 had the most tone and most different tone form what I already owned. I'm just breaking this one in, but I hope it'll be a good rhythm guitar that responds well to digging in with the flat pick.
The latest acoustic I've bought is a used solid toped Alvarez Yari 12 String. I haven't had it or played it enough yet to know how much I'll like it.
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