Recommendations for medium-bodied acoustic please (up to £500)

earwighoney

Dave_Mc said:

I haven't really tried enough Martins to know (plus I haven't tried any recently if @earwighoney is correct!). I wasn't super-fussed on the Martins I tried- whether I tried bad ones, or whether I just don't like them, I dunno. Of course... I could try one now and love them.

Google 'Martin guitars & binding' There are lots of returns about this.

I came across this post on the Martin Forum

"Might be better to compare the Martin binding issues with larger-scale brands. I see plenty of complaints about Taylor (bracing changes, continual lineup refreshes, heavy-handed marketing, etc) and Gibson (poor culture/leadership, craftsmanship flaws, oddball product decisions, etc), but I've never seen binding issues come up as a hallmark of QC issues with either of those brands. You don't see it from brands like Yamaha or Alvarez or Fender either, though I think the US-based brands are more likely to be represented and debated on the forums."

Taken from here

https://umgf.com/are-there-still-binding-issues-on-post-2017-martin-t212987.html

Also, a few threads crop up about new Martins needing neck resets.  There are far more threads about poor QC for Martins than other brands from what I have seen.

Smellyfingers

I think in this price range you might find much better value in good used,, rather than new, particularly because of  the numbers of people who are likely to to have taken up playing during the pandemic then given up.

The difficulty is trying a lot of used guitars in one place at once. But guitar guitar seem to have quite a good selection of newish used exaamples- don't forget to haggle!

DartmoorHedgehog

Used is definitely a good way to save some money, but I think driving to Birmingham or London to try some out would pretty much remove any financial advantage.

I'd certainly be happy to buy used if an example of what we're after happened to come up for sale, but I think trying lots of them out in one place is unlikely to happen unfortunately - although Bristol may be worth a trip if there's a place there that has a good amount of used stock.

I think at the sort of price we're considering, the advantage of being able to try the actual guitar we end up buying (i.e. buying from a more local shop, which probably means new) may turn out to outweigh the savings made by buying used (which will more than likely involve a long road trip).  With a £4000 guitar where you're potentially saving £1500 it makes more sense.

But I won't rule anything out yet.

Smellyfingers

I've heard that perversely the % loss in value of mid range £1000<  guitars is generally greater than higher value ones. 

Dave_Mc

earwighoney said:

Dave_Mc said:

I haven't really tried enough Martins to know (plus I haven't tried any recently if @earwighoney is correct!). I wasn't super-fussed on the Martins I tried- whether I tried bad ones, or whether I just don't like them, I dunno. Of course... I could try one now and love them.

Google 'Martin guitars & binding' There are lots of returns about this.

I came across this post on the Martin Forum

"Might be better to compare the Martin binding issues with larger-scale brands. I see plenty of complaints about Taylor (bracing changes, continual lineup refreshes, heavy-handed marketing, etc) and Gibson (poor culture/leadership, craftsmanship flaws, oddball product decisions, etc), but I've never seen binding issues come up as a hallmark of QC issues with either of those brands. You don't see it from brands like Yamaha or Alvarez or Fender either, though I think the US-based brands are more likely to be represented and debated on the forums."

Taken from here

https://umgf.com/are-there-still-binding-issues-on-post-2017-martin-t212987.html

Also, a few threads crop up about new Martins needing neck resets.  There are far more threads about poor QC for Martins than other brands from what I have seen.

Wow that's not great! And it seems to be on pretty expensive ones too! Thanks for the info  

DartmoorHedgehog said:

Used is definitely a good way to save some money, but I think driving to Birmingham or London to try some out would pretty much remove any financial advantage.

I'd certainly be happy to buy used if an example of what we're after happened to come up for sale, but I think trying lots of them out in one place is unlikely to happen unfortunately - although Bristol may be worth a trip if there's a place there that has a good amount of used stock.

I think at the sort of price we're considering, the advantage of being able to try the actual guitar we end up buying (i.e. buying from a more local shop, which probably means new) may turn out to outweigh the savings made by buying used (which will more than likely involve a long road trip).  With a £4000 guitar where you're potentially saving £1500 it makes more sense.

But I won't rule anything out yet.

Yeah I agree. Some people act like you should always go used and that going new is silly (never mind that some of the stuff I've got new for better-than-second-hand prices!). But sometimes it just doesn't really make sense. I'm not sure either that blowing a sizeable amount of the budget on petrol and then having to go used to recoup that money makes a whole load of sense...

Smellyfingers said:

I've heard that perversely the % loss in value of mid range £1000<  guitars is generally greater than higher value ones. 

I thought that was a myth? Even if it's not, a bigger percentage of a much smaller figure is still usually quite a bit less than a smaller percentage of a bigger one...

Tannin

^ This is the old "buy a BMW to save money" bullshit.

"BMWs have lower fuel consumption and hold their value so much better" is the claim. (As compared to, e.g., a Ford or a VW or a Toyota.)

The fuel consumption advantage, if any, is usually swamped by the high cost of servicing and the outrageous price of parts.

As for "holding value" better, the $95,000 BMW can be re-sold for $75,000. Wow! Only 20% depreciation! Isn't that great! Compare with the $35,00 Toyota which you can only get $25,000 for - a massive 30% haircut!

Ahem ....  when you do the sums, the BMW owner actually lost twice as much money to drive the same distance. 

Unless you are Mr Clueless, you don't buy a BMW to save money, you but one because you want one and you can afford to waste a few tens of thousands. Good luck if that's you. 

DavidR

....and!! The Toyota driver didn't have to pay £200 to a BMW dealer to get their 'BMW iDrive' switched back on because they had (up until then) saved lots of money by getting their BMW serviced at their local friendly garage instead of at a dealer.

In BMW-speak this is known as an 'upgrade'.....although absolutely nothing is upgraded or changed, not even the satnav. The rest of us call it Switching The iDrive Back On. Unsurprisingly this is something "only a dealer can do". It's punishment for not having a dealer service the car to begin with and £200 of guitar money down the Swanny.

Sorry. Just ever so slightly off-thread - and a little bit bitter tbh.  :-)

Hope hunt for guitar going well and that you are both having fun looking. Don't buy a BMW.

guitarjack66

I saw JP Cormier,a while back,saying that because Martins are now largely mass produced that you get the same kind of problems you get with all mass produced guitars. If you want to avoid it you are into stupid money and even then things can still go wrong anyway. 

DartmoorHedgehog

DavidR said:

Hope hunt for guitar going well and that you are both having fun looking. Don't buy a BMW.

Don't worry, BMW (likewise Apple, PRS etc) are the last people who'll be seeing any of my money!

And thanks, I'm sure whatever we end up buying she'll end up with a nice guitar that will fulfil her needs for a good few years.  One downside is that most of these guitars we've been trying have been considerably nicer than mine - I don't generally suffer with GAS, but this isn't helping 

Smellyfingers

There's nothing like a matt black tuned beemer.

bertie

Smellyfingers said:

There's nothing like a matt black tuned beemer.

thank fuck for that

Tannin

They are of no interest to me. Anything without the ground clearance and all-round toughness to take into the outback is off my radar.

Um .... Talk about off-topic.

Are you still with us @DartmoorHedgehog? If so, why?

stufisher

Apologies ... a bit late to this thread so I expect you're well down the road to choosing something.

Anyway, I watched this vid about a year ago and found it very informative and helpful ... it may or may not be useful to you too.

Good luck with your selection.

stufisher

Just had a quick look to see what's around in the pre-loved marketplace ... here's an example

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115386924291?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=Ad2Ud2IGTeu&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=wain264jTQS&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

stufisher

... just for completeness, BAX have a 

(B-Stock) LAG Guitars Tramontane 118 T118ASCE Natural Thinline Electro-Acoustic Guitar

for £389

I'm done!

DartmoorHedgehog

stufisher said:

Anyway, I watched this vid about a year ago and found it very informative and helpful ... it may or may not be useful to you too.

Thanks, that's another make I hadn't heard of. Interesting that he says they used to be distributed by the same people as Faith - they're certainly very similar in looks, spec and price, so not surprising there was a bit of a conflict of interests there.

I think at the moment the advantage the Faith has (that's currently top of our list unless we come across something else) is that local shops stock them so we can try them and make sure we pick one she really likes.  Some other brands look nice on paper but we'd probably have to buy blind.  Some nice cosmetic touches on those Lags though.

Tannin

LAG is French. That's the good news. The bad news is that they basically just sell stuff made in China, same as 1,953,134 other brands (including Faith). Still, has to be worth a look. 

stufisher

Yeah the designs are French and construction is Chinois but it seems to work. At the top-end techy-range you have the Hyvibe which is out of this world as an all-round sound system ... seriously, check it out if you like being astonished  

DartmoorHedgehog

stufisher said:

At the top-end techy-range you have the Hyvibe which is out of this world as an all-round sound system ... seriously, check it out if you like being astonished  

I had a go on a Yamaha last weekend with a little built-in amp that did reverb and chorus.  Quite fun to play around with but felt a bit gimmicky.  I don't know if it had a speaker inside it or a transducer that vibrated the body.

bertie

IME LAG ?  nah,   underwhealming