X-Mas present for father.......

thane1200

thane1200

Medicated Member
Hello all,

I know nothing about geetars and I know my father secretly wants one. He used to play....we were at a friends house and he picked up an old dusty Yamaha "tuned" it, and started putting together little melodies (he hasn't touched one in 30 years).

I need some recommendations on $150 or less acoustics, that are worth a darn. Thanks for any advice.
 
I'll bet you can find a decent Yamaha on eBay for $150 - they're a good value for the money.
 
Another vote for the alvarez, yamaha makes some nice entry level acoustics as well, so if you are into taking the lead of the majorty here, that is a good call as well.

Not knowing much about guitars, it will help if you have some guidelines to picking out one that will work for him. A few easy guidelines I can think of:

first thing is to make sure it sounds good, you can just strum it open, it should ring well, and be fairly bright, but not sound thin. Try the strings out on all the frets, and make sure that there is no buzzing.

neck is all improtant in the "feel" of the guitar. if he has smaller hands, try to find one with a more narrow neck, if he has long skinny fingers, a wider neck might be better for him. I have short bulky fingers, and find a narrow neck to work best for me, but then i have to finger the notes carefully or the sides of my fingers will mute the strings next to it. If you share the same size/shape hands it should be fairly easy to feel if you can stretch your hand from one edge to the other in various places on the neck.

"action" is probably next you want the strings to be pretty close to the frets, especially as you move up the nexk of the guitar, but don't worry too much about really high up the neck, your dad is not likely to be doing a lot of eddie van halen style finger tapping on the 14th fret on this acoustic.

hope that helps you a bit.

Daav
 
daav said:
Another vote for the alvarez, yamaha makes some nice entry level acoustics as well, so if you are into taking the lead of the majorty here, that is a good call as well.

Not knowing much about guitars, it will help if you have some guidelines to picking out one that will work for him. A few easy guidelines I can think of:

first thing is to make sure it sounds good, you can just strum it open, it should ring well, and be fairly bright, but not sound thin. Try the strings out on all the frets, and make sure that there is no buzzing.

neck is all improtant in the "feel" of the guitar. if he has smaller hands, try to find one with a more narrow neck, if he has long skinny fingers, a wider neck might be better for him. I have short bulky fingers, and find a narrow neck to work best for me, but then i have to finger the notes carefully or the sides of my fingers will mute the strings next to it. If you share the same size/shape hands it should be fairly easy to feel if you can stretch your hand from one edge to the other in various places on the neck.

"action" is probably next you want the strings to be pretty close to the frets, especially as you move up the nexk of the guitar, but don't worry too much about really high up the neck, your dad is not likely to be doing a lot of eddie van halen style finger tapping on the 14th fret on this acoustic.

hope that helps you a bit.

Daav
Click to expand...

Thaqnks for the pointers....my dad has rather large hands; but I do know
 if a geetar sounds good or not. :p :)
 
Yamaha,s are definitely a great inexpensive guitar but how about a Jasmine by Takamine?Rivals Yamaha quality for about the same price.
 
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