Help: what's the right acoustic for me? :halo:

[thomas dee ross]

Hi guys,
I need to buy an acoustic guitar and I wanted to stay under 1000$. I could go 1200$ but just if I really like it!!!

I played guitar for more than 10 years, played on some bands, I'm not really a professional musician though. Just to give you the picture, I own a telecaster standard, a semi-hollow body Hagstrom Viking, and an acoustic-electrified Seagull Maritime Mini Jumbo (which I was thinking to sell to buy something else).

I'm interested in buying a new (or used) acoustic-electrified guitar and I'd mainly play blues rock & soul. The genre that I have in mind is something in between Black Keys, Gary Clark Jr., Allen Stone and classics such as Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers...
So I imagine a warm sound, something that can be both good for strumming and finger picking, plus I'd like a guitar with low action that would allow playing higher position chords easily.

Which size would be the best one for this?

Do you have any brand or model in mind?

I went on some shops, watched videos, and I'm really confused ...I thought I needed a big guitar like a jumbo or a dreadnought, but I was impressed by a martin 000, fairly smaller guitar...anyway I would really really apreciate to hear your take on this matter.

Thanks

Tom

[Oldguy64]

Find an Alvarez-Yairi WY-1.
The acoustic played by Ani DiFranco, Bob Weir, and Joe Bonamassa.
Already has decent electronics. And if you shop about, you find one right at $1000.


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[thomas dee ross]

Alvarez-Yairi WY-1, I'll see if I can find one to try in one of our local shops.


Any other suggestion? What about the body size or style? Any recommendation for this genre?

[Ruppster]

I agree on the Yairi. I have more expensive Martins and Taylor's but use my Yairi's for gigs more often than not. Great guitars for the money.

Your price range makes it tough for me to make a recommendation that I think would be ideal for you. That being said, consider a used Gibson J-15. You can get those just under a grand and it should be fine for all the things you mention. Maybe not a perfect fit, but close. If you could come up a bit I'd point you to a Gibson J-45 Standard or maybe a Martin 000-18.

[Daveyo]

Larrivee 03 series
great all around guitars and very affordable for an all solid wood guitar
dave

[thomas dee ross]

I played some larrivee, but I had the feeling like they were all loosing it on the mid frequencies. As a matter of fact so far I tried those:
yamaha ac1m, taylor 114e, martin drsgt, martin gp cpa4, martin ooo 15, eastman AC520ce.

And between those the sound that I liked the most was the Martin 000 15, even though my concern with that model are that it seems too small (I don't know if it could be a problem for volume dynamic, or simply for non amplified volume) and the other one is that it doesn't have a pickup.

Next on my list to try are gibson j 15, alvarez wy1. I'm curious about Guilds too.