After long deliberation & much thought I have decided to recommend the Tacoma Guitars as the Absolute best guitar you can buy at the lower, mid and upper price ranges.  With their new ridiculously inexpensive Brazilian Rosewood & Macassar Ebony Models no other company can touch them in the under $1,000.00 arena. In fact I have compared $800.00 Tacoma's to $2,000.00 Martins & Taylor's.

In a double blind test the Tacoma has won 20 to 1 over the Martin and about 15 to 1 over the Taylor's. Please don't think even for one second that we have discovered the Taylor Guitar is better than the Martin. We did however discover why Taylor is outselling Martin and why many untrained ears will pick a Taylor over a Martin. (Here is my theory on that). The people at Taylor are building a very nice guitar, however they are using extremely thin wood in the construction. This thin wood is what allows their guitars to resonate and give that shimmering crisp Taylor signature tone.  It is my theory that if they used slightly thicker wood their guitars would improve with age better than they do now.

The challenge that Taylor undertook was to outsell Martin. To do so they have had to come up with some pretty clever manufacturing concepts and innovations.  Personally, I am not a believer in what Taylor does.  I prefer my guitars to mellow with age. I prefer my guitars to have a little more bottom end and soul.  I am not a Martin person myself, (too traditional) but I would sooner own a Martin than a Taylor.  Actually I would really prefer a McPherson but those start above where the Tacoma's Top Out.  In actuality I own 2 Tacoma's.

In fact, a good customer of mine who owns a very expensive model Taylor guitar recently told me that his top of the line model sounded OK when he was playing on stage. At home or  In the studio however it sounded like the high hat. I couldn't have put it better if I tried. This person was actually given his guitar by Taylor (He is a celebrity) asked me not to use his name in print because he didn't want to seem ungrateful to them for giving him the guitar.

At the CMT awards in Las Vegas I was at the soundboard, There were several different guys that were doing sound, and they were having a horrible time balancing the Taylor guitars in the mix. One of them told me that he had to cut Alanis Morrisette completely out of the mix once because her Taylor was so incredibly shrill that it was destroying the mix.  (The Official Guitar For The Country Music Awards is now Larrivee)

Remember the vast majority of guitar buyers have untrained ears and they don't really know what to look for. I'll bet that 85% of the people who buy Taylor Guitars would fall into that category. Several years ago Taylor did some Brazilian Rosewood models that I sold in the $4,500.00 price range. They were the best Taylor's I have ever sold. However the Tacoma Amazon eats it for lunch. The only other acoustic guitar I consistently like is the Larrivee.   

If you call I am prepared to give names and phone numbers of people who own Tacoma's and who also own Martin's, Taylor's, Santa Cruz, etc etc. I already know what they are going to say.  But you can hear first hand from people who actually own these guitars.

If you are one of the people that likes the brightness that Taylor offers, Tacoma wins easily with some of the most beautiful quilted maple model at a tremendously lower cost than all of it's competitors.  (Remember Tacoma has their own tree forests, They grow their own Spruce, Cedar  & Maple) The new "Amazon" Brazilian Rosewood model totally decimates any Taylor, Martin, Breedlove, Santa Cruz or even Larrivee that compete in the high end bracket. 

The midrange bracket is a no man's land where you really have to be extra careful. Each guitar stands alone in this area due to varying conditions of construction and basic likes and dislikes.  In short it is impossible for me to proclaim any winner there due to the fact that they are all pretty close. If I was going to make a suggestion however the Koa Kahuna  will definitely stand up to some of the other companies models for twice the price.

Ed Roman