Saturday, November 1, 2008

Acoustic Guitar Reviews

By Reg Green

Before buying a new acoustic guitar, be sure to check out some acoustic guitar reviews. Two kinds of reviews you'll find are ones written by experts who sample and play a wide variety of guitar, and reviews written by ordinary people who just want to give you an opinion about how the guitar works, sounds and feels to them.

People who have several years of guitar experience are qualified to write expert guitar reviews. The should have several guitars from several manufacturers reviewed. Even though they will have personal preferences, they should be able to determine the positive and negative of any acoustic guitar. Any biases should be explained. You don't need someone with a degree in music, just someone with adequate experience playing different acoustic guitars. Its best if someone explains why their opinion should be considered.

When you look for user reviews, you should locate web site containing a few reviews of each guitar written by a variety of musicians. Many music stores have web sites with user reviews. Every guitarist plays his or her own unique type of music at different kinds of venues with different arrangements of band members. A classical guitar player who plays at wedding receptions has different needs and preferences than a rock guitarist who performs in nightclubs. Be sure you find reviews from individuals who play the same style of music and who are at the same level of playing that you are or that your aspire to.

There are a couple of tricks you can use when searching for acoustic guitar reviews by experts or users. One thing you can do is to put quotes around particular phrases like: "acoustic guitar reviews." When using Yahoo, this trick can reduce the number of hits from 17 million, when the search is performed without quotes, to a little over 6,000, when it is used with quotes.

This handy technique also works when you're looking for individual acoustic guitar reviews. For instance, if you're looking for reviews of the Martin DX1, enter martin dx1 (without quotation marks) into Yahoo's search engine and you'll come back with over 35,000 hits! But if you type "martin dx1" you will only get around 10,000 hits.

To narrow your search for specific acoustic guitar reviews down even more, try adding a plus ( ) sign after the phrase and the word "review". That will give you only the sites that contain that exact phrase on the website.

If you try something new by entering this- "martin dx1" into your search bar, you'll get upwards of 500 hits. To find something more specific, like the action on a particular guitar, you can add that to the query as long as you add a plus sign to it. Acoustic guitar reviews will be easier to find, which will make your decision easier if you take advantage of these two small search tips. - 15485

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