nylon string guitar

[radismatt]

hello-
this might be the wrong place to ask, but can anyone recommend a quality classical guitar? i am looking to spend under $500. how do people usually approach recording these and ukes? in a similar fashion as a steel-string acoustic or like a more percussive instrument.
thanks

[0xeneye]

If you live in a bigger city, you may have a folky or acoustic - only music store. Go there and try them all. Similarly, go to Guitar Center, they sometimes have a room dedicated to classical guitars.

You have to let you ear choose for you - there's little valuable technical information on classical guitars, so I would take recommendations with a grain of salt. Tests I would do however are ; evenness of tone, eveness of loudness of each individual string, straightness of neck, struts, binding, glue, and also how the guitar has been stored. Beyond that, it's all subjective.

[redear]

$500 is not so much for a quality nylon. Just play a bunch in your price range until you hear what you like. Or save up some more and have a real nice one built for you. trust me, you will love a hand built classical guitar.

[Kindly Killer]

la patrie etude is extremely decent for dirt cheap. i also have a 1970 alvarez yiari, plus i had a $nicer$ guitar when i was a performance major many moons ago, and the la patrie will track about as well as any of them. it has a very modern voice, not spanish at all. so if that's what you're looking for, that will do the trick nicely, with money left over even.

one thing that stands out with real high end "classical" guitars is volume, which IMO is not an issue for most recording scenarios. i think any old yamaha student beater is good enough, and the la patrie is extra nice. i don't know that you would really hear the difference with a guitar salon type guitar unless it was a different construction type.

save your money for instruments where you can really hear the difference, e.g. pianos. or electric guitar *amps*

[radismatt]

thanks for your recommendations. i read about the etude, but my girlfriend and i think i should spend money on new glasses instead of a new guitar. though i am not buying a new guitar, i got a chance to record my friends shitty $100 classical guitar. this was the hardest instrument i have ever tried to record.