Gibson J-185 EC

Natural finish, Jumbo, cutaway for high fret access, good quality everything, presumably made in 06 or 07, Fishman pickup with preamp (3ch EQ), Spruce top I believe. Specs are readily available for this guitar.

I give this rating an 8, cause I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether, say, a Spruce top is better than a... a whatever other woods they use. Alls I know is, it's got everything I need, in spades.

Lemme tell ya about the sound... I had a Takamine that I loved for years, which got run over by a car, so I had to get something new.

I'm very particular about tone, especially where acoustic instruments are concerned. As such, I walked out of the house and visited all the music stores in town, and played pretty much every acoustic guitar I saw, Martins, Taylors, Taks, etc, and I heard some very very nice sounds, but as soon as I strummed this one for the first time, I knew this was The One.

Stipulating that he can afford the price tag, I don't believe that there's a musician out there who wouldn't be happy with this guitar - the sound is clear, balanced, incredibly responsive to subtleties like picking dynamics, where you strum, etc. There's always certain guitars that are better suited to certain styles of music (if you ONLY play bluegrass, get a Dreadnought, for instance), but if you need an all-purpose axe that will not let you down regardless of where you find yourself, this is the one.

I just had it setup (see below), and the action is incredibly low, with no buzzing - by acoustic standards, amazing. Off the shelf it was pretty good, and I'm all about learning to do stuff yourself, but I'm also now sold on the benefits of a professional setup by a competent luthier, and when you come right down to it, if you're spending this much on a guitar, isn't it worth paying $50 once a year to keep it properly maintained?

I live in Winnipeg, with extremes of weather, and the onset of winter brought on a fairly bad adjustment; the intonation went out and the action went up. After a setup, though, it's fine, and while not all acoustic guitars are quite this sensitive, you pretty much expect this sort of behavior, especially in this climate. This guitar is gonna live in its case with a couple of humidifiers for sure.

One other minor complaint is that strap button on the pickup jack keeps unscrewing itself, but overall, I doubt there will be any major problems.

It's a Gibson. I have no idea what they're like, but I imagine they take care of their customers.

Not the most expensive instrument I touched, but pretty damn close. But, when it comes to your guitar, twenty years down the line you will never regret struggling to pay off that extra thousand or two instead of compromising on a lesser instrument.

If this exact guitar were available, I'd recommend it heartily, but for all we know, a different J-185, made on a different day, could be vastly inferior. To anyone thinking of buying a high quality acoustic, I recommend doing what I did: go out and playing every guitar you see, until you hear the sound you want, and get that guitar, regardless of whether it costs $100 or $10,000.