acoustic guitars - name brand

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Xaaron1377

New member
Ok, so I recently went to a guitar store and was playing some of the vintage (as well as newer) Martin's & Gibson's and also some Taylors and Takamine's, etc., expecting that they would sound like heaven compared to my old '70s Yamaha, but I was honestly kind of surprised that even around the $3k range, most of these guitars just didn't seem to sound as good as my Yamaha (to me, anyway). Call me crazy, but I feel like a lot of these high-end guitars are a little overpriced (or a lot). Or maybe I am just crazy. I was wondering if anyone else has had an experience like mine, where you seem to find a cheap guitar (or whatever) to sound/feel/play better than the big boys... :guitar:
 
Not so surprising but not an indictment of high end guitars. Instruments are individuals, at any price point. You'll have some gems and some turds. I have some old Martins that sound wonderful. I have a lower end Breedlove that's a fine guitar and I like it just fine but it just doesn't sound near as "meaty" as my D-41. Same for my son's 70's vintage Yamaha Dreadnaught. Now I have a friend that has an old 70's vintage Hohner Grand Auditrium sized acoustic that I made a bone saddle for and is one of the best sounding acoustics I've ever heard. YMMV.
 
This highlights why you need to try out instruments before you purchase.

I have only played two acoustics in the last 3 months, a friend's Martin Mini that came out to a camp site, and a 12 string Takamine which I rarely play. And they are both sublime guitars. There is no better or worse. They are great instruments, and the tonal qualities are quite subjective.

There are some real gems out there sitting underneath someone's bed waiting to be had. You just have to try them and listen out for something that really appeals.

The dynamics of joining pieces of timber together to produce that elusive tone are not just isolated to Martin, Gibson and Takamine.
 
True, brand does not, in and of it's self, make for a good guitar. See my post "Guitar Shopping Experience With A Noob" for my thoughts/experience on the matter.
 
It can be tough comparing guitar sound by playing them at different times and different places - I had two guitars that I didn't think sounded very different, but at one point my son and I were playing them, and my daughter was sitting across the room at a roughly equivalent distance from both (and she doesn't know/care about guitars at all, really, certainly not the specifics like the brands), and I asked her how they compared - she said one of them blew the other one out of the water.

Even there in the same room, I don't believe the difference was as apparent to me (having one of them right up in my face, practically, and the other about 10 feet away) as it was to her. I also think that to really appreciate the way a guitar sounds, you need to sit some distance away from it in front of it - like maybe 6 feet while someone else is playing.

(the one she said sounded better was about 10x the price of the other - I didn't ask her if it sounded 10x better :) - I gotta believe no)
 
I'm pretty opinionated about this because I build guitars for a living, but I'll just share two thoughts that I don't think come up very often in conversations like this;

1. Guitars are not always priced by how much better they are than another guitar. It costs a lot of money to make a guitar in the United States and usually the price is simply the expense of making it, plus margin like in any other business. It's not always the manufacture making a statement about their ranking in the quality spectrum.

2. When a company is producing hundreds or thousands of guitars every day, there will be a wide variation in the properties of the materials, especially in mid-range models. The designers know this, and they design the instrument to meet expectations of durability based on the weakest possible material they expect to be using. If a guitar has a really stiff top (which would normally be a good thing) it can actually suffer sonically because the bracing is setup to make sure the weakest top will not cave in on itself. A certain number of guitars coming off of any manufacturing line will hit the "sweet spot" whereby they are thicknessed and braced perfectly for the properties of the back, sides, and top. Your Yamaha might be one of those.

Or maybe all those guitars at the store have two year old strings on them. :)
 
JohnWatkins said:
Or maybe all those guitars at the store have two year old strings on them. :)
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Yeah, that.

I think most guitar players recognize that for a lot of guitars, once you get over about $2,000, the differences are going to be less related to sonics and more related to the amount of labor and inlay (i.e., more labor) that goes into these things.

I had a rare event happen in our hometown recently. A Guitar Center opened. This was important for one reason only...when the doors opened, all the acoustic guitars had new strings on them. It's really the only way to compare guitars, in my weak, amateur opinion.
 
chrisharris said:
Yeah, that.

I think most guitar players recognize that for a lot of guitars, once you get over about $2,000, the differences are going to be less related to sonics and more related to the amount of labor and inlay (i.e., more labor) that goes into these things.

I had a rare event happen in our hometown recently. A Guitar Center opened. This was important for one reason only...when the doors opened, all the acoustic guitars had new strings on them. It's really the only way to compare guitars, in my weak, amateur opinion.
Click to expand...

Chris.... we thought you were dead.... :)
 
Another point - not all guitar stores (or even Guitar Centers) are created alike. The one closest to me (Nashua) has a good tech on staff. The guitars on display are set up well and (generally) watched over. (I did see one with a substantial crack through the side one time!)
I went to the GC in Framngham (about 40 miles from me) and was amazed to see that most of the guitars were in terrible set up shape. Bowed necks, buzzing frets ... I suppose they do it so they can immediately charge someone another $75 for a set up, but who would buy a guitar that played like sh!t to begin with?
 
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