Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Researching Acoustic Guitar Reviews

By Jay Tyler

If you'd like to buy a new acoustic guitar, check out the reviews first. You'll want to look at two different kinds of reviews: expert reviews and user reviews. The experts will tell you how the guitar compares to other similar models, while users will tell you how satisfied they are with their purchase.

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're searching for user reviews online, you want to locate a website that offers a number of reviews by a variety of guitarists for each of the instruments. Different guitarists play different music in different places and with different accompaniment. A classical musician has requirements that are different from those of the guitarist who plays rock gigs on the club scene. Check out reviews by those people who play your preferred type of music at the level you're aiming at.

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.

When searching for specific individual acoustic guitar reviews, this trick will also work. Let's say you want to find reviews about the Martin DX1. Typle in that phrase in Yahoo search and you'll end up with about 38,000 results. But if you type in the same phrase using quotes like this "martin dx1" you'll get only about 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.

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. - 16036

About the Author: