Breedlove Guitars D25/SM Atlas

I agree with previous poster, this a great guitar. Here's the specs from the Breedlove website:

???Dreadnought with Soft Cutaway
???Solid Sitka Spruce Top
???Solid Mahogany Back & Laminate Sides
???Depth 4-9/16??? at Tail Block, 3-3/4??? at Heel
???Lower Bout Width 16???
???Improved Breedlove Bracing with Ultra-light JLD Bridge Truss for stability and sustain
???Tortoise Bound Body with BWBWB Purfling
???Abalone Rosette with Black Border
???New STUDIO Inlay Pattern by Kim Breedlove
???Glossy Finish, Satin Neck
???Rosewood Bridge, Fretboard, and Headstock overlay
???Nut width 1-11/16??? (43mm)
???Compensated Saddle
???Dovetail Neck Joint
???Double Action Truss Rod, sound hole adjustable
???Chrome Grover Mini Tuners
???New L.R. Baggs Stage Pro pickup (UST)
???On board chromatic tuner with in-line mute, notch, phase, EQ
???D???Addario EXP strings
???Strings goes through bridge like an electric guitar
???Breedlove Deluxe Gigbag included
???Designed by Kim Breedlove and Peter Newport, Crafted in South Korea
???Final Setup & Quality Assurance in Bend, Oregon USA, new label, QC sticker

I play a mix of fingerstyle and slide, mostly blues, folk, swing, some pop covers. The Breedlove is played in standard, drop D and A, and open G tunings.

This guitar suits my style fine, especially for live sound. My standard set-up is guitar >>blues driver >>fishman pre-amp >>fender champ 12 >>board. Nothing, of course, is acoustic once you leave the couch, but I can get a great, full, balanced "acoustic" sound for picking and strumming, and then footswitch to OD for a more "electric" slide and lead. I thought the under-saddle transducer would be an issue, and had already made up my mind to add a Fishman Rare Earth Humbucking soundhole pickup, but now I'm not sure I need it.

This guitar replaces a maple and spruce acoustic-electric, and I'm really liking the richer sound, more 3D tone.

The guitar, which had been in the showroom for a few months, is set up perfect for me; high enough for slide, but low enough for easy finger picking. The intonation is dead-on all the way up the fretboard.

Came with D'Addario EXP16 coated phosphor-bronze light gauge strings (0.012 - 0.053) which I replaced with Elixir light gauge polywebs.

Also, I'm not sure if the guitar is actually a short-scale instrument or I cut the tension a bit by tuning a half-tone low (you know, low E = Eb, etc) but the strings bend nice, but not too much.

I didn't notice any physical flaws, altho I only checked on the major structural stuff. It seems oke.

I think D25/SM will be fine for live playing. The bridge-truss system makes the guitar a little heavier than what I'm used to but also gives it more structure. Feels very solid. Time will tell.

About the backup guitar, I always bring two guitars. My second is a parlor guitar kept in open D tuning. If one fails on me somehow, I can fall back on the other.

I've not deal with them.

Probably a total of 14 years playing. I'm very happy with this guitar so far. I'm giving it a 9 because I bought it recently and need to get to know it a bit better.

Brand new Korean made cutaway acoustic with onboard L.R. Baggs Stage Pro pickup. Spruce top, mahogony back, and pressure laminate sides. There is beautiful tortoiseshell binding all around the body and a stunning abelone inlay around the sound hole. The detail on the craftsmanship is apparent on this instrument.

Sounds great. Nice full rich tones and a warm high end, not too tinny like many acoustics in this price range. But where this guitar really shines is when amplified. They got it right with this one folks. Very smooth and VERY accurate reproduction. The notched eq provides subtle changes in the midrange and the phase switch is incredible. It changes the phase of the signal coming out of the guitar so that no matter how close or far you are from your amp, you no longer have to worry about signal cancellation. If you hear some phasing going on, flip the switch and viola, full, rich, in-phase sound is restored. You will have to check it again every time your relative position to the speaker changes but it's great to even have that option.

The dynamic range on this guitar is nothing short of amazing for a sub-$1000 instrument. Play with a whisper or pound the thing. It remains tonally consistent thanks to the bridge truss. It feels very solid. Then guitar stays in tune through hours of playing.

One more note, the feedback threshold on this guitar is very high. I can get pretty loud before this thing even hints at feeding back.

Plays great. Nice low action and the bridge truss really helps stablize the guitar. It took a couple of days before the guitar got fully acclimated to my home and I had to add a little tension to the truss rod to compensate for my slightly higher humidity compared to the guitar room at GC.

Seems to be built very solidly. It's heavy and sturdy. The fact that is stays in tune so well is a testimony, to me anyways, that the guitar is well built and will last a good long time.

no experience

Been playing for 35 years and this is the best ax I have ever owned. Not to say that there are not plenty of better guitars on the market, but you'll be hard-pressed to find more bang for your buck than this guitar. I have compared it to Taks and Taylors in the same price range and the Breedlove was the hands down winner by a long margin. I can think of nothing bad to say about this thing. I am in love. Put it this way... A guy in my band plays a high end ($2500) Martin and he makes sure that I bring by Breedlove to every gig. He prefers it to the Martin in both sound and playablily. (Ok maybe the microphone sounds better but forget it for live use unless you want a LOT of feedback.)