Hello and welcome to AGF! We apologize in advance for the beating your wallet/bank account is about to take!
You are me, about 8-9 years ago. If I look back far enough, I posted the same thing back then. Here's the deal: You're overthinking it when it comes to tone. You're also spending way too much time worrying about it. First of all, you're never going to find the perfect guitar from a tone aspect. Even if you do, you won't realize it until after you've sold it off to buy something else while chasing down the perfect tone machine. What I ended up doing is buying a couple acoustics - always used - and I kept rotating them out. One in, one out. I'd always have a 'keeper' and 'trader'. The one that I currently liked the most was the keeper and would stay while the other would be sold or traded here in the classifieds for something new. In 8 years I've bought/sold/traded nearly 40 guitars trying to find that perfect tone.
I now know that it really doesn't exist but it was (and is) still fun going though the process and I've learned SO much about guitars and what I do like. I started on small body, sitka/EIR guitars and slowly got to bigger body guitars with sitka/mahogany and all mahogany with some exotic wood offerings in there as well. What I did discover in the process is that ultimately the tone, while important, is not the end-all, be-all. Sure, good tone is important but what's most important is that the guitar is comfortable to play and fits you ergonomically so you want to play it. I've also discovered that specific things aren't nearly as important to me as it used to be. I used to be very picky with things like neck shape, nut and string spacing and body size. Now I know that I can and will acclimate to almost anything.
As for practicing/playing/learning and burning out, the best thing for me was to form a little band which in my case was forming an acoustic duo with my wife on vocals. This made learning new songs way more fun. We went from the living room to open mics to gigging in about 5 years and we're still going strong. My guitar collection continues to grow and change. I now have a three guitar stable as my default that consists of my high-end, stay-at-home tone monster guitar, my live amplified gigging guitar and my busking/travel/beater/backup/take anywhere guitar. It's less about the delicate nuances of tone than about which guitar can fill that role the best.
For the live amplified gigging guitar it's a guitar with a multi-source onboard proprietary pickup system (like the Takamine you dismissed, but in my case Cole Clark). For the backup busking beater it's a Rainsong carbon fiber with an LR Baggs Element Stage Pro (also an onboard barn door system). Neither of these guitars will win a supreme tone contest but they both fill their roles perfectly like no other guitar can for me. Last is my high-end tone monster. This can be any maker and comes down to your budget. I've slowly climbed the ladder and just this past December found my Zen guitar in a Froggy Bottom H-12 Deluxe in spruce/EIR. Back to where I started.
So relax, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Check out the classifieds here and on Reverb and grab the one that you think you'll like. Get it used and in good condition for a fair price and you'll be able to sell it down the road for something else that peaks your interest. Good luck and have fun. And most important, make sure you keep us posted on what you buy with detailed NGD posts with lots of great photos!
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