History:

Haven't been playing for a few years and I recently took out my more-than-10-years-old Hofma acoustic guitar which I bought for RM200+ last time. It was out of tune so I have to tune it, and the saddle popped. Time to buy a new acoustic guitar. One of the main reason why I don't play my acoustic anymore is that the action have always been too high, and playing it hurts my fingers. Since I am thinking about performing (simple stuffs) on my wedding dinner night, I hope to buy a new acoustic with built in pickup.

Shopping:

So I brought my guitarist friend along to shop in a couple of shops, and have so far tested some guitars in the range of 1k-2k, like Yamaha, Norman and other Godin brands (can't remember their name), Takamine and Tanglewood. I have tested most of the guitars myself and find the action a bit to the high side for some of them. For example, one of the Yamaha shops, where they have 3 units of the same guitars, all 3 of them have different action height!

Criteria:

My major criteria is with built in pickup and good playability. Thinking about the high action of my old guitar previously gives me nightmares. Currently the quality of the sound do not matter so much to me.

Question:

For acoustic guitars with pickups in the range of 1k-2k, will there be any difference in playability? I have read from the Internet that playability/action can be adjusted on most of the modern guitars, and shouldn't be one of the major consideration factor when buying an acoustic, is that true for guitars in the range of 1k-2k?

My thought this is, if a 1k guitar and a 2k guitar have the same playability, and the only difference is the sound, then I would settle for the 1k guitar.

This post has been edited by kiwlm: Aug 3 2009, 09:15 AM

Well, it all comes down to preference.

But for acoustics, i personally prefer electric guitar strings on acoustics...

My friend recently bought a cheapo RM250 acoustic guitar... it's nice.

I used it for our recording of a song... end product is quite good.

Why would you take superior playability but inferior sound? The action can be easily adjusted by a guitar tech almost anywhere. All they do is sand the saddle down or maybe tweak the nut.

Guitars will sure have different playability. Some people like high action, some people like low action.

Sound quality should be number 1 because at that range, it's going to have a solid top. And solid tops sound better with age so people keep them a long time. I assume you're not going to sell it off after your wedding (congrats btw ).

Haha, I don't meant that I want to take playability over sound. Because of my inexperience with guitars (since I have only owned 1 and played like 3), I just want to make sure that the playability will be good even if I buy a RM1k guitar.

So if like you say, that the action can be adjusted for this range of guitar. Then I only need to consider the sound difference for my hard earned money! Knowing that if I finally decide to get a RM1k guitar, I am not sacrificing playability.

My friend own an Ibanez AW series without pickup which cost around RM800, the neck started to bend up causing high action liao. And according to one of the shop's salesman, low quality guitars are bound to bend up one day, because of the quality of the wood that they use! This is what I am really afraid of, since if I buy a guitar with pickup around RM1.3k (targetting tanglewood), it will be roughly equivalent to the RM800 guitar without pickup, and I don't want my guitar to bend up beyond repair 3 years later. The shop was trying to sell me Norman which cost 2k and supposed to have better wood so is more resistant to neck bending problems.

Wow, someone else who realizes an RM 1.3k guitar with pickup is equivalent to a RM 800 guitar .

Anyway, neck bend is also easy to fix. There is a metal rod (or two) inside the neck of the guitar. An allen wrench can be used to turn the rod thus straightening the neck. But it should only be done by a pro . But acoustic guitar necks are supposed to be slightly bent or bowed.

Yeah, action is very easy to adjust. My classical had extremely high action as well and all it took was a sanding down of the saddle. Raising action is a bit more complicated though .

Here are some links :

Is this neck bent?

Bent Guitar Neck?

string height