Never Judge on Looks Alone

This is my Tacoma DR-12 dreadnought I bought from Pedrini's Music in Alhambra in 1999.  It is actually my favorite acoustic guitar because it is loud, the neck is wide and the tone of the solid spruce top projects well.  I played it consistently up until 2006 -- when it met a terrible accident during a family trip to Sacramento where the lower bout got smashed and the binding started detaching.

It sat in a case, damaged until 2 weeks ago when I decided to take it to get repaired.  The luthier, Henry at Folk Music Center in Claremont put it back just enough to not make it worse.  Carpenter's glue is all the magic he needed to make it playable again.  I picked it up today and played it for the first time in years and I now remember why I prefer the DR-12's tone over any Taylor acoustic I have.  Like an old friend I haven't seen in years, literally, it felt familiar.  I recognize the tones I get from it.

The abalone inlay work around the soundhole was done very well and added to its overall visual appeal when I first picked up the instrument in '99.  Add the clear pickguard and it was not like any other guitar I have.  When I put it away in 2006, the finish coat was still perfect, seeing nothing but the dark confines of the case, stashed away in a closet.  When I opened it last year, I was just shocked at the finish coat starting to peel off like a scab on a healing wound.  WTF?  It started in the rosewood sides and at the Gumby-shaped headstock.

A little bit of research revealed this was a Tacoma problem for a few years built around the time I got mine.  Fender Musical Instruments bought Tacoma in 2004 and had since stopped making Tacoma brand guitars.  Warranty on the finish?  Foggetaboutit.  Yes, a "Made In USA" guitar can undergo really crappy manufacturing processes.  But what's interesting about this guitar, is if you can ignore its visual ugliness, it still sounds excellent.  So like they always say, don't let appearances fool you.  The soul of any instrument is not revealed until after it speaks.

Taylor 210e Acoustic Guitar

I'm not a fan of cutaway acoustic guitars specifically because of the the attenuated volume of such models.  This Taylor 210e plays as good as it looks.  When I found it used at Guitar Center, I could not believe that is was a used guitar -- everything looks and feels new, specially the fretboard.  About the only thing that was non-standard is the Gator case that came with it, which incidentally is a perfect fit to the guitar.

The beautiful spruce top and the simplest of bindings make this guitar a little more elegant in design without the excess of fancy that don't really add to the sonic quality of the instrument.  Plugged in, this 210e is very bright and balanced with feedback at a minimum.  Just about every song I play sounds better on the 210e's fast neck; plugged in or unplugged, it'll do the job for a very long time.

Takamine F309

This is a Martin OM copy by Takamine that I picked up at a used music store in Colorado Springs in the mid 90s.  I went there a lot for work and one time, I was there for over 2 weeks and decided I needed a guitar to kill boredom.  This is an F309 model made with mahogany and has an aged red brown finish to it.  For a Japanese acoustic made in the early 80s, this one is very well made and had obviously lasted over 30 years.

I'd be the first to tell anyone who wants to play a mahogany top guitar, the sound is not for everyone.  It is not particularly loud (compared to a dreadnought) nor has the same projection as a spruce top guitar.  However, I used it mostly for fingerpicking tunes.  The other feature that is unique is the Martin clone headstock shape and type.  I've read that Martin did file a lawsuit because of the (obvious) similarity.

Not sure what this guitar is worth these days but it's the oldest guitar in my collection.  I did pay a decent price for it but haven't really played it in the last 10 years.  The Takamine label and model are actually burned into the strip of wood that binds the bookmatched back of the guitar.  Inside the guitar is a sticker with the Takamine logo and the serial number 82070274.  From what I this tells me, this is the 74th guitar manufactured of July 2, 1982.

Yamaha Silent Guitar

I wanted a travel guitar at the time (early 2000s) and I was playing a lot of nylon string guitar.  The Yamaha Silent Guitar is collapsible with a built-in pickup for headphone playing or plugging into an amplifier.  I found the use of headphones really cumbersome at best -- for some reason, I need to hear the tones coming out of the guitar body.

I do find the design of this guitar both sexy and functional.  It uses a solid wood piece for the neck-through-bridge main part and hard plastic/wood for the guitar body.  Only the top half of the guitar body comes out and is typically held in place by set screws at the tail and where the neck meets the body.  On a playability scale, however, I would only give this guitar no more than a 6 (out of 10) -- not because of the neck, which is decent, but because of the small narrow body.  Maybe it's Pavlovian conditioning that my ears expect a loud, resonating cedar top every time my finger touch a set of nylon strings.  I don't play it enough to reverse that expectation.  That has got to be it.

Baby Taylor

This is the first instantiation of a Baby Taylor, made in El Cajon, California.  I got this in 1998 and took it on trips thanks to the portable size of the hardshell case that fits in the overhead compartment of any 737 or larger plane.  The finish is no-nonsense flat and this one has seen plenty of abuse over the years. One of the kids learned how to play guitar with the Baby Taylor mostly because of its size.

The small body does project quite a bit and it's louder than my other small-bodied Takamine.  It's construction is somewhat unusual where Taylor used two screws at the 16th fret to hold down the neck.  Ugly as hell but I assume there's some kind of structural rationale for it.  The bridge and the headstock, painted black, are the same shape as my other Taylors.

The Baby Taylor case is something special as well.  Nice thick, maroon material lines the inside of the case and the guitar body fits just perfectly.  Taylor now makes a slightly larger model, the GS Mini but the original Baby has a charm that's sets it apart from any other Taylors.

Top: Sitka Spruce

Sides: Sapele Laminate

Scale Length: 22 3/4 inches

Corboda C5-CE

At some point in the past I played flamenco music for a whole year after seeing Paco de Lucia in concert.   It's a stretch to even think of myself as flamenco player but I gained valuable fingerpicking techniques during that year away from steel strings, electric or acoustic.  I got this Cordoba in 2009 not because I outgrew my other classical guitar but because this one has a built-in pickup and tuner.  Oddly enough, the C5-CE model is considered an entry-level classical guitar.

This Portugese-made guitar does not have a serial number nor a country of origin but when I tried it, I didn't care.  The price was right, the neck was nice and wide and the projection was what I was looking for.  When I plugged it into my acoustic amp, it has a really bright upper end.

I can't even remember the last time I played anything remotely flamenco in style but I do on occasion, play some jazz standards on the Cordoba.  It did come with a nice matching gray soft case.

Jasmine Acoustic

This is my first acoustic guitar (technically, my 2nd but the first one was a really cheap-o and just fell apart).  Jasmine is a lower end brand name by Takamine made in Korea (not Japan).  At the time, I definitely could not afford even the cheapest Tak dreadnought which ran about $500.  I got this Jasmine S-80 for about $300 from Guitar Center in Hawthorne in 1990.  Don't even know if the top is solid or laminate spruce but it sounded nice and I played this for almost a decade until the Taylor bug bit me in the late 90s.

I haven't played this in about 10 years and the wood had stabilized to the point that any warping the guitar was going to do was over and done with.  The inlays and the plastic bindings are not of the best craftsmanship but this guitar was made when manufacturers first started out using the Korean labor market.  I've tried several string sets with this Jasmine but the John Pearse mediums sound the brightest.