Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Researching Acoustic Guitar Reviews

By Jay Tyler

Before purchasing a new acoustic guitar, you should take the time to read some acoustic guitar reviews. You can find reviews at your local bookstore or on the internet. This will give you a wide range of information and what experiences people have had with a variety of acoustic guitars. There are also consumer and expert reviews available, which usually require some type of subscription. Someone well-versed in acoustic guitars can give you a detailed review about a particular brand, the expert reviews will prove helpful. Or, if you just want to know what the average person thinks about a guitar they have used, the consumer reviews will give you that information. Also you can get quite a bit of information from your local music store.

An expert acoustic guitar review should be one that is written by someone who has had several years of guitar-related experience. The reviewer should also have several different models from different manufacturers. The reviewer should be able to put aside personal preference and objectively point out a guitar's pros and cons. Should a bias be present, it should be admitted and explained. A degree in music is not necessary for evaluating acoustic guitars. Applicants should really know their stuff, and should be able to explain why their opinion is valid and should be taken into consideration when buying a new guitar.

If you want acoustic guitar reviews, you should look for a site that has multiple reviews of each guitar by many different musicians. Many music stores also have websites with user reviews. Each guitarist plays in different types of venues, different kinds of bands and has a unique style of music. A guitarist from a band that plays at wedding receptions has much different instrument preferences from a guitarist who plays in a rock band. Look for reviews for people who play in the same area that you do, or someday hope 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.

A helpful hint when searching for individual acoustic guitar reviews, may work like this. If you are looking for reviews on Martin DX1 and put just martindx1, without quotes, in Yahoo search you will find approximately 38,000 hits. But, when you put quotes next to "martin dx1" there will be only approximately 10,000.

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.

Try putting "martin dx1" + review in the search bar and you'll get almost 500 hits. If you want to search something specific, put it in there with a plus sign attached. These search tricks to find acoustic guitar reviews will help make your guitar buying decision easier, by narrowing your search to the most helpful results. - 16492

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