For Lisa’s birthday, I decided to take her around and buy her a “real” guitar. She started learning on an old, extremely low-end model that my dad bought back in his high school days and never used–needless to say, for someone with a music degree, not an entirely pleasant experience.

We wanted to find something that would sound good, tune well, and not fall apart in a year. Brand names were not a consideration, nor were fancy features. The highest priority was something that Lisa’s sensitive ears would enjoy listening to, that wouldn’t break the bank.

We got a little advice from a few sources before setting out, and armed with that knowledge made three stops:

At our first stop, we were looking specifically for a Seagull S6. While they didn’t have the S6, they did have the S6+, which is virtually identical except for the finish. All the hype seemed to be true–this guitar sounded really, really good. Lisa played a few other guitars there, but nothing really compared.

At the next stop, we tried out some Oscar Schmidt models, made by Washburn, who is known primarily for electric guitars. They sounded OK, but not great.

Finally, we made a trek across town to visit a bigger guitar shop, and tried out some low-end Takamines (ick), a cheap Taylor (cheaply made), and a Martin DX-1.

The Martin was $550, about $230 more than the Seagull we found, and although Lisa really loved the sound of it, the $230 difference proved to be too much, considering that the DX-1 is mostly synthetic materials, and the only piece of real wood on it is the top. We headed back to our starting place and bought the Seagull. I like it, I really do–for someone who doesn’t care about brand names and isn’t going to play professionally, this is a great guitar to have.