How do you prioritize your choice in acoustic guitar?

Cranky · July 2020

Though I only had the same acoustic for a good ten years and didn't know much about them, I've learned a lot over the past couple years and have begun to put a lot more thought into my guitars. So I'm curious to learn about how others approach this, how we rank the various criteria when we think about what to look for in an acoustic or why we pick up one acoustic one day and a different acoustic the next.

Here's a list of criteria -- in no particular order -- that I've learned to consider. How would you rank them? What critieria would you add, if any? Elaborate at will, of course.

Top wood
Back/side wood
Fretboard wood
Neck wood
Gloss vs satin neck
Body shape
Scale length
Neck girth/shape
Cutaway/full-body
Acoustic vs. Acoustic-electric
Body color/finish
Saddle/nut material

(Please don't tell me that "you gotta play it first." We all know that what matters is the tone and feel while playing, but what about when you choose among several guitars or when you walk into the shop and say "what do you have in ___________ acoustics?")

Andy79 · July 2020

Weight. Less is more
V neck
Done

Built in electronics have no place on acoustics guitars

If it doesn’t sound great change the strings, get better at playing or play it in the bathroom. Even Taylor’s can sound decent in there

Kilgore · July 2020

I would add slotted or paddle headstock to the list.

It's not a deal breaker, but I'm not particularly fussed on slotted headstocks.

Winny_Pooh · July 2020

From playing a few I already know what to expect.

If I want a sweet allrounder I will pick up a D18 or 00018 if I want a bit more clarity for fingerpicking. A rosewood dread for big Neil Young chords and riffs. A J45 style for americana and dry warm chords.
Rosewood OM for balanced crisp tones, longer scale for louder attack and mahogany and shorter scale for something softer and going further, a 0015 which is also a great strummer.

You really do need to try them to understand what I mean

McSwaggerty · July 2020

For me - Body Shape, Scale Length, Nut Width, String Spacing at Bridge.....

Chris_J · July 2020

Is it comfortable to play?

Does it sound good?

drofluf · July 2020

Body Shape or more specifically size as I find Dreads uncomfortable to play.

Then scale length but as long as it's "full size"

After that I'm prepared to try anything

octatonic · July 2020

For myself, disregard spec entirely and concentrate on how it plays and how it sounds.
I want it to speak to me.

I tend to favour rosewood bodied 000's though.
1 11/16th or 1 3/4 width nut.

ICBM · July 2020

This is going to sound stupid, but... you’ve got to play it first.

I was not expecting that my favourite acoustic guitar ever is a Dreadnought with red-painted flame maple back and sides, a 25.5” scale, a paddle headstock, and an ornate pickguard and silly bridge design so the whole thing looks like Dolly Parton’s handbag - pretty much everything I thought I didn’t like. If I’d applied ‘criteria’ I would never have even picked it up.

But when I did I played about two chords and knew I had to buy it - it’s the exact “sound in my head” of what an acoustic guitar should sound like - before then I’d owned several very nice guitars, but all of them needed me to work at it to get the sound I like out of them, if it was even possible at all. With the Dove I just pick it up and it instantly sounds right, every time.

Kilgore · July 2020

ICBM said:

This is going to sound stupid, but... you’ve got to play it first.

earwighoney · July 2020

Andy79 said:

Weight. Less is more
V neck
Done

Built in electronics have no place on acoustics guitars

If it doesn’t sound great change the strings, get better at playing or play it in the bathroom. Even Taylor’s can sound decent in there

I quite like the concise nature of this post, even if they aren't my main priority for instruments.

Redlester · July 2020

I agree with @ICBM. ;;

I also see the OP's point of view, and to that extent there are features I favour- largely cosmetic it must be said- that mean I'll make a beeline for certain guitars when trying them.

That said, I largely shy away from carrying round an ideal 'mental spec sheet'. That would lead me to rule certain things in and certain things out. I found out early on that for me it's how the thing sounds and and how comfy the neck is that will win me over. I tend to work on the basis that nothing's ruled out and nothing's ruled in, until I hear and feel what is right to me.

I am a shop assistant's worst nightmare in some respects!

There's one very important criteria I'd add to your list with is not quantifiable or itemised in a catalogue or online: It's inspiration. Does this guitar make me want to play, and crucially play my very best?

ClosetCasual · July 2020

Playability and Tone, that's it. Everything else is down to aesthetics and personal preference. I prefer the look of smaller bodied instruments and without a cutaway. English Yew back and sides looks incredible but may not sound any better than standard mahogany/rosewood. But then again it may. It all depends. Woods vary, as do luthiers.

artiebear · July 2020

The lovely thing about acoustic guitars is that they each have interesting tonal characteristics due to woods, construction, scale and size. For a long time now I have based my criteria to acquire upon the concept of "what can I achieve with this guitar that is specific ?" and to a degree, though it sounds horribly pretentious, "what can this guitar teach me in terms of expanding technique and expression ?".
While I love my electrics, I have a greater love and appreciation for the differences between my acoustic guitars. I am happy that over the years I have taken a punt on guitars, that, when I started out with an ideal acoustic in mind were so far away from the tick list.

I found out that I really love 1'/13'16 necks on 12 fretters for certain finger styles. I found out that 1930's 2 tone bar bracing sounds amazing for country blues and just about anything else.
I also found out that being a rosewood guy ( so I thought ) that Koa, mahogany and Macassar Ebony are flavours I love.

Not to mention, finding that a longer scale Sobell, through to an 00 with short scale are both brilliant at different things.

Like others have said, it's way better not to approach with your list, rather than to go in there to learn and be surprised. Bit like dating I suppose, but a lot more fulfilling

JRgtar · July 2020

Andy79 said:

Weight. Less is more
V neck
Done

Built in electronics have no place on acoustics guitars

If it doesn’t sound great change the strings, get better at playing or play it in the bathroom. Even Taylor’s can sound decent in there

Ha, I love the sound of my Taylor!

It it all comes down to tone and comfort. I think, with acoustics, there is less of a correlation between price and tone i.e. you can find a lower priced acoustic that appeals in terms of tone to you.

10thumbs · July 2020

Being of , Ahem..... "Japanese stature" , I find trying to play a Dreadnought is like trying to hug a chest of drawers , so size and shape are important to me, after that , its top wood , and then neck .

But with less and less guitar shops around ,the opportunity to play before you buy may soon become a luxury some of us will no longer have.
So will most of us have to roll the dice with Internet purchases ?

fandango · July 2020

There is a process. Definitely.

And it starts with the rationale behind why you want/need an acoustic guitar - what do you want it to do? This then informs string choice - nylon or metal.

Then comes price point. I contest that you'd consider top wood before price. Unless you're rich enough not to care what the guitar costs. Most people can't afford a £5k+ Martin.

Then size and shape, followed by features (electro acoustic, strap buttons, tuners).

Once you've narrowed that down, then you can start to consider tone, feature details and quality of construction.

Sorry to anyone who says 'go play as a first thing to do', but you HAVE to have some idea of what you want BEFORE you enter a guitar shop. At that point, hit the guitar shops to try them out. Tweaking certain criteria as you pick up guitars to play (e.g. extending the budget, compromising on features, comfort) - as you appreciate/hunt down the tonal quality you want.

crunchman · July 2020

You have to play it. It's just about what woods it's made from. Those woods will be affected by how it is braced.

For me, the two main things are how it feels when you play it, and how it sounds. You have to play it to know either of those.

ToneControl · July 2020

artiebear said:

The lovely thing about acoustic guitars is that they each have interesting tonal characteristics due to woods, construction, scale and size. For a long time now I have based my criteria to acquire upon the concept of "what can I achieve with this guitar that is specific ?" and to a degree, though it sounds horribly pretentious, "what can this guitar teach me in terms of expanding technique and expression ?".
While I love my electrics, I have a greater love and appreciation for the differences between my acoustic guitars. I am happy that over the years I have taken a punt on guitars, that, when I started out with an ideal acoustic in mind were so far away from the tick list.

I found out that I really love 1'/13'16 necks on 12 fretters for certain finger styles. I found out that 1930's 2 tone bar bracing sounds amazing for country blues and just about anything else.
I also found out that being a rosewood guy ( so I thought ) that Koa, mahogany and Macassar Ebony are flavours I love.

Not to mention, finding that a longer scale Sobell, through to an 00 with short scale are both brilliant at different things.

Like others have said, it's way better not to approach with your list, rather than to go in there to learn and be surprised. Bit like dating I suppose, but a lot more fulfilling

yep

and if you were to own 10 acoustics, who would want them all to be as identical sounding as possible?

if you had 10 cars, would you not have one 4x4, one sports car, one RV, one luxury saloon, etc.

Cranky · July 2020

ToneControl said:

and if you were to own 10 acoustics, who would want them all to be as identical sounding as possible?

if you had 10 cars, would you not have one 4x4, one sports car, one RV, one luxury saloon, etc.

Yeah that was part of my initial question, not just about buying a guitar but also about why we pick up one of ours but leave the others alone for periods of time. I have four acoustics, two of them I would consider to be properly nice, performance-worthy acoustics, and sometimes I wanna play one of them and I'll ignore the other, and then vice versa other days or stretches of days. And sometimes I'll play a cheap one for days and ignore the rest. So I just think it's interesting like that, how a guitar will speak to you and either suit a given mood or put you in a certain mood.

Electrics are the same for me, but for different reasons. But either way, I'm definitely finding that playing a wider variety of guitars is moving me along as a player in general.

Devil#20 · July 2020

Well the Dreadnought has been around for over a hundred years and the preferred guitar shape of most of the famous acoustic players and Neil Young prefers then so that's argument over IMO. Can't afford one but I'd love a Martin D28. So Martin D or J series dreadnought. Taylors sound brighter and a bit weedier than Martins. I like the Maton's but you need to dig deep into your pockets for a Maton, Justin Sandercoe likes his Maton's but he is an Australian I suppose and probably gets them for free but they sound great.

Devil#20 · July 2020

You forgot strings and string gauge and string material. There's so many variables it's almost as if every single guitar could be unique and therefore its sound. Even down to build variation for the same model. The biggest variable to the sound of the guitar and how tuneful it is is the lump at the back of the guitar.

ToneControl · July 2020

Cranky said:

ToneControl said:

and if you were to own 10 acoustics, who would want them all to be as identical sounding as possible?

if you had 10 cars, would you not have one 4x4, one sports car, one RV, one luxury saloon, etc.

Yeah that was part of my initial question, not just about buying a guitar but also about why we pick up one of ours but leave the others alone for periods of time. I have four acoustics, two of them I would consider to be properly nice, performance-worthy acoustics, and sometimes I wanna play one of them and I'll ignore the other, and then vice versa other days or stretches of days. And sometimes I'll play a cheap one for days and ignore the rest. So I just think it's interesting like that, how a guitar will speak to you and either suit a given mood or put you in a certain mood.

Electrics are the same for me, but for different reasons. But either way, I'm definitely finding that playing a wider variety of guitars is moving me along as a player in general.

The thing that baffles me is when people have 10 strats or LPs with pretty much the same spec, just different colours

Kilgore · July 2020

ToneControl said:

artiebear said:

The lovely thing about acoustic guitars is that they each have interesting tonal characteristics due to woods, construction, scale and size. For a long time now I have based my criteria to acquire upon the concept of "what can I achieve with this guitar that is specific ?" and to a degree, though it sounds horribly pretentious, "what can this guitar teach me in terms of expanding technique and expression ?".
While I love my electrics, I have a greater love and appreciation for the differences between my acoustic guitars. I am happy that over the years I have taken a punt on guitars, that, when I started out with an ideal acoustic in mind were so far away from the tick list.

I found out that I really love 1'/13'16 necks on 12 fretters for certain finger styles. I found out that 1930's 2 tone bar bracing sounds amazing for country blues and just about anything else.
I also found out that being a rosewood guy ( so I thought ) that Koa, mahogany and Macassar Ebony are flavours I love.

Not to mention, finding that a longer scale Sobell, through to an 00 with short scale are both brilliant at different things.

Like others have said, it's way better not to approach with your list, rather than to go in there to learn and be surprised. Bit like dating I suppose, but a lot more fulfilling

yep

and if you were to own 10 acoustics, who would want them all to be as identical sounding as possible?

if you had 10 cars, would you not have one 4x4, one sports car, one RV, one luxury saloon, etc.

You see this a lot on the AGF.

Someone will have 10 different D28s. Nice as D28s, are I wouldn't want ten of them.

There was one guy who just had all Koa guitars, about forty of them!

earwighoney · July 2020

Kilgore said:

You see this a lot on the AGF.

Someone will have 10 different D28s. Nice as D28s, are I wouldn't want ten of them.

There was one guy who just had all Koa guitars, about forty of them!

I've been on a few different forums over the years, and the AGF is one of the strangest.

stickyfiddle · July 2020

Big +1 for playing it and choosing. I also bought a Dove because it was the best dread in the shop. I then swapped that for an HD28 when I found one that was even better than the Dove. I intend to keep that HD28 forever, and buy another couple of non-dread styles at some point for variety. But I'm not worried about spec sheets at all

ICBM · July 2020

stickyfiddle said:

Big +1 for playing it and choosing. I also bought a Dove because it was the best dread in the shop. I then swapped that for an HD28 when I found one that was even better than the Dove. I intend to keep that HD28 forever, and buy another couple of non-dread styles at some point for variety. But I'm not worried about spec sheets at all

The 'specs' become irrelevant once you realise that really the only similarity between the two guitars constructionally is the overall shape and the top material -

Back/sides - Dove maple, HD-28 rosewood
Neck - Dove maple, HD-28 mahogany
Fingerboard - Dove rosewood, HD-28 ebony

- and yet they sound very similar to each other.

Even more remarkably, a friend of mine had a Larrivée SD-50 - a mahogany back/sides and mahogany-neck 12-fret Dreadnought - and that sounded very similar to the Dove as well.

stickyfiddle · July 2020

ICBM said:

stickyfiddle said:

Big +1 for playing it and choosing. I also bought a Dove because it was the best dread in the shop. I then swapped that for an HD28 when I found one that was even better than the Dove. I intend to keep that HD28 forever, and buy another couple of non-dread styles at some point for variety. But I'm not worried about spec sheets at all

The 'specs' become irrelevant once you realise that really the only similarity between the two guitars constructionally is the overall shape and the top material -

Back/sides - Dove maple, HD-28 rosewood
Neck - Dove maple, HD-28 mahogany
Fingerboard - Dove rosewood, HD-28 ebony

- and yet they sound very similar to each other.

Even more remarkably, a friend of mine had a Larrivée SD-50 - a mahogany back/sides and mahogany-neck 12-fret Dreadnought - and that sounded very similar to the Dove as well.

Absolutey. The thing that makes a guitar really connect with a player is the combination of the specs and how it's put together and exactly how the specific pieces of wood work together. AND how your own fingers and ears respond to that.

And you can only tell that from playing them.

Cranky · July 2020

stickyfiddle said:

Big +1 for playing it and choosing. I also bought a Dove because it was the best dread in the shop. I then swapped that for an HD28 when I found one that was even better than the Dove. I intend to keep that HD28 forever, and buy another couple of non-dread styles at some point for variety. But I'm not worried about spec sheets at all

So this is another aspect of my personal evolution. Not something I wanna dwell on here, but I had the confidence and ambition smacked outta me growing up. It took me years to get up the courage to grab a guitar and start learning, nigh 1O years after that to play around friends or family, and still a few more years to walk into a guitar shop and have the courage to play in front of strangers and other guitar players. So needless to say, the idea of playing a guitar first and shopping around was an overwhelming notion that I talked myself out of for the longest time, even though I thought about it quite a lot.

SteveF · July 2020

Weirdly, I went into my last acoustic buying experience thinking I wanted one thing (some kind of cutaway electro like a Taylor 314e or similar) and was fairly sure I disliked dreadnaughts. I then went and tried everything the local shop had in and ended up with a... Martin dreadnaught...

What I did find is that although I found some of the more rounded, smaller bodied cutaways I tried more comfortable to play, the sound just didn’t compare for me. Visually, I love the look of Taylor guitars, but in person I didn’t find one that didn’t sound overly bright and trebly. I am not sure whether the fact the one I bought was a second hand one about 5 years old and it had “opened up” or whatever (I’m not sure if that sort of thing is just hokey or not!) but the sound from the one I ended up with was exactly what I was after. There was a slight trade off with comfort, but I don’t think anyone claims that dreads are the most comfortable acoustics to play.

TheBigDipper · July 2020

I went into Project Music a couple of birthdays ago knowing I wanted to play and try as many cedar-topped Lowdens as I could and buy the one I liked the best. I walked out with a Brook Taw - spruce top, bubinga back/sides.

I never would have ordered a Brook for home delivery. I knew I didn't want one. The Taw has a slim neck (front to back) and a short scale. I knew I didn't like those. I wanted a Lowden. I would have been in ignorance forever. You never know until you play it. I played 15 guitars that afternoon over a period of 2-3 hours. Imagine how hard that would have been if I'd been ordering them over the Internet, one at a time.

So, my buying process will continue to be "visit a shop with lots of interesting stock and play as many as they'll let me". Project Music (Exeter) is a 2 hour drive from my house, BTW.

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How do you prioritize your choice in acoustic guitar?

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