suziko wrote:Its all personal choice , me i'd go with the option of A/electric. Its best 'factory fitted' IMHO. Plus to get retro fit of good quality by a Luthier can be expensive. The A/E option gives you just that the options straightaway. Next though you go looking at amps, then effects then... lol. Serious though as I say going A/E at start gives the option immediately, and no expensive luthier costs down the road. Remember a straight Acoustic might just not be designed entirely with electrics in mind either so adding on retrowise might not always be good. If you were particulalry handy you can convert a acoustic yourself by buying cheap passive piezos and placing under the bridge with super glue opr velcro and drilling a hole for jack through the base of the guitar (not for the faint of heart though)dubious quality though. Best to try under saddle piezos if you're going to do that and thats another story again not for faint of heart taking drills to your pride an joy and drilling through the bridge and routing out saddle groove to get right intonation!!This is probably a dumb question, but when you say you wish you'd "bought it with the pickup" does that mean you wish you'd bought the acoustic/electric version of it? It looks like (from guitarcenter.com) the ac/el version runs about $100 more. Should I seriously consider getting that over the plain acoustic?
Phew I digressed a bit sorry. But in summary me i'd buy a Grand Auditorium cutaway style and ensure it comes with factory fitted electrics. The body unplugged will give good sound yet you got the options
cheers
Chas
Chas, old buddy, normally I agree with you 100% but I think the choice of buying factory installed vs. after market pickups has changed dramatically in recent years. When buying a good guitar, there may be a very slight, if any, price advantage to factory electronics. Getting one after market should not be a deterrent.
Modern pickup technology has progressed significantly. Many aftermarket pickups are easily as good and often better than factory installed. K&K, B-Band, Schertler, PUKW and many others make fantastic pickups, be they under saddle, sound board or sound hole. They offer many different feature and price levels. Unless you get fancy with externally mounted pre-amps and volume controls the price to get them installed isn't prohibitive either.
Sometimes the "big boys" Taylor, Martin, Tak make deals with large pickup companies, like Fishman, that may not always be best for ever musician. Taylor for example has had a real problem with their "Expression" system and has switched from Fishman electronics to a proprietary system. Basically they put the same pickup system in all their guitars except for the very high end models. The jury is still out on the long term reliability of the new system.
Bottom line, I personally would not let whether a guitar had electronics in it influence my buying decision because I know that I can always get a really good after market pickup installed. The only advantage I see is not having to mess with it later and you can go home right now and plug it in!
Cheers! :cheer: