[jdobrick]

JerryM- not sure if this will be helpful at all:

Long time lurker, but my first time posting. I have been messing around with guitars for probably five years but have just started getting serious and taking lessons six months ago. This started when my nine year old daughter decided she wanted an acoustic guitar and I picked up a Taylor GS Mini. She plucked the strings a few times and lost interest. Dad on the other hand really started having fun with the instrument.

I really like the GS Mini. Nice sound, not too expensive, and pretty easy to play but I decided since I was just starting to learn in earnest I should pick up a full scale guitar. I don't actually know that this is a valid line of thinking but hey, it was a reason to go guitar shopping! I was looking at the classifieds here and after staying awake until 3AM one night browsing, I knew I had to make a decision and just pull the trigger on something.

Living in a NY apartment with a child I found CF appealing as a low maintenance option. I didn't have a lot of composite instruments I could test locally. Guitar Center has some Rainsongs and Sam Ash has the McPhersons. I would have liked to try the Blackbird El Captain but didn't have a chance.

I ended up ordering one of the 2017 limited edition McPherson Sables. From what I can tell, just a few changes vs. the standard model. Gold colored fretwire vs. nickel on the standard model and gold colored tuning machines. If there are any advantages to these changes, I'm clearly not a good enough player yet for them to matter. I went this route because I found the stock design a bit boring but the Rainsongs I tried I found a bit too flashy. More importantly while I couldn't directly compare the instruments compared to the Rainsong I liked the McPherson sound better (more on that later)

The guitar arrived a few days ago. Here are my observations keeping in mind I don't have much experience so my impressions are fairly uneducated. The hard case seems nicely made and the guitar fits snugly in the case. The guitar itself seems very well made. The smoothness of the neck stands out to me, it is sanded to a very smooth matte finish and I find moving around the neck quite comfortable. The profile of the neck also fits my hand well. Not too chunky but not too thin either. The guitar comes with two saddles, and shipped with the low saddle installed. The action seems nice and for new guy, I was able to easily hit barre chords that I can't nail on the Taylor. The body of the guitar is a bit heavy and I find for me this settles the guitar into a comfortable playing position in my lap.

If there are “regrets”, right now I have a few. First off, it is a bit silly that I purchased such an expensive guitar, I'm sure I would get as much from an instrument at a much lower price point but considering I almost pulled the trigger on a much more expensive instrument on the classifieds section, maybe I got off easy. Second, the guitar doesn’t sound as nice in my apartment as it did in the store. The tone is fairly bright for my taste and there is a lot more reverberation (the sound rings a long time) than I am used to which makes music a bit muddy. I assume the latter is more my lack of technique. There is a lot of complexity to the sound which I didn’t notice in the store. This isn’t a bad thing per-se but right now I’m not a big fan. I expect I will get used to the sound in time. My final comment is that after a few hours playing between the slightly wider nut and the longer scale, everything is in the wrong place compared to the Mini. Guess I need to keep practicing to get used to things! Comments on the sound are unplugged. I'll try the guitar through an amp this weekend.

Happy to answer any questions. Thanks to all the regular posters here, I’ve learned a lot lurking.