Still loving my FG830!

It's a great guitar for those situations where I'm not comfortable bringing my Martin D-18.

My guitars are:
Yamaha FG441S - Drunken barn jam
Yamaha FG830 - Civilized barn jam
Martin D-18 - Recording, rehearsal or live performance.

 

I recently tried a Yamaha FG 800 and was impressed. Please understand that this is a $300.00 (CDN...taxes in) guitar. I was impressed GIVEN the price point.
Dave

Regarding Yamaha, you never have to quantify the like of them to me. I have a couple and they are all excellent guitars, In a thread a while back I said I would rather sell my Martin DR before my L series. I stand by that.

C

 

I can see that. Quite a difference in tone between the two though. If I owned both, it would be a hard choice because of the difference. Both are excellent but different.

 

I let the FG-331 go (from CGF classifieds) only because it was just too good an affordable player's guitar to hoard.

 

My buddy's son has an FGX800C that I'm very familiar with. Great sounding and playing guitar. Surprisingly rich and warm sounding compared to some other Spruce tops I've tried out. Some of them still have issues with the neck though. Luckily not this one.

 

I've had an FG700MS for some years now, and I liked it so much that I went back (after 2 or 3 years) to buy another one to keep in an open tuning.

I found out that the FG700MS had been discontinued and replaced with the FG800M, so I bought that instead.

They are both amazing guitars, and I really appreciate Yamaha's knack for leaving out the bling and focusing on the truly important stuff, to keep the price down.

It's a good idea to play several examples before you buy. I found that there is a fair bit of variation from one to the next. I must have played a dozen examples before I bought the first one. None of them were really perfect, but some were definitely better than others. I don't think that is particularly surprising at this price point.

I'm still very happy with both of these guitars. You really can't beat Yamaha in this part of the market.

 

Do you find the 800 has more bass? They scalloped the braces for the 800 series and I find that was the big difference.

I agree about trying a few. I tried three before picking one and it's great but not perfect. After two setups there's a bit of buzz if you dig in and a few upper frets on one of two strings sound a little dead.

 

Do you find the 800 has more bass? They scalloped the braces for the 800 series and I find that was the big difference.

They're both big booming dreadnoughts. They sound very similar to my ears. Remarkably dynamic too, very responsive to changes in pick attack.

Mostly I notice some difference in the neck profile - the 800 is thicker and more square - although this might be more about these specific examples than anything about the models in general.

I also notice the wear on the finish (on the neck) on the 700, since I've had it a lot longer and played it a ton more.