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Guitar Review: Yamaha’s FGX3 Is a Modern Folk Workhorse Inspired by 1960s Classics

The guitar has a soft, warm tone that works great for fingerpicked chord patterns and breezy strumming. When strumming chords with a pick, I found it definitely sounds best to approach the FGX3 with a more delicate touch—a thinner pick and a soft strum can go a long way—while heavy-handed strumming and picking tend to get harsh. Approached with a light to medium touch, chords sound rich while maintaining a clarity that allows individual notes to shine.

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eastman ac622ce acoustic guitar

Gear Review: Eastman AC622CE Acoustic Guitar

The AC622CE is a beautifully made guitar with a big and bold sound. It manages to be both strong and clear at the same time, great for strumming and inviting of picking and fingerpicking, the latter especially offering firmly spoken tones.

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Eastman DT30D Guitar

New Gear: Eastman DT30D

Eastman’s Double Top series is among the first to use the boutique-maker idea of a double top—a soundboard incorporating two outer wooden layers over a synthetic core, for enhanced sound and responsiveness—in a production steel-string guitar model.
Lâg Tramontane HyVibe 10 Guitar

Gear Review: Lâg Tramontane HyVibe 10

A collaboration between two French companies, the Lâg Tramontane HyVibe, turns the guitar’s body into a speaker that can add several different effects to your acoustic tone, loop, metronome, and interact with a smartphone app for even greater control of the preamp’s parameters.

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PRS_se_a60e

Gear Review: PRS SE Angelus A60E

No matter how I played the Angelus, it delivered a nicely proportioned sound, with a spanky top end layered over a controlled bass and midrange. The low end wasn’t cavernous or boomy, which helped it feel balanced across the frequency range, especially useful for fingerstyle parts on open tunings and easy to control through a loud amp.

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Alvarez-Yairi Honduran DYM60HD acoustic guitar

Gear Review: Alvarez-Yairi Honduran DYM60HD

The partnership between Yairi and Alvarez goes back several decades, with the Alvarez-Yairi stamp reserved for Alvarez’s finest instruments. While much of Alvarez’s line is manufactured in China, the Yairi-branded guitars are made in a small shop in Kani, Japan, where modern power tools are eschewed in favor of hand tools, like spokeshaves for carving necks, and hide-glue construction is standard throughout.