Alvarez DY74C

[gthom]

Hey, I've posted a few times on this forum but haven't really introduced myself...I started playing about 20 years ago, mostly electric garage band stuff through high school and college. After some substantial time off, I started picking stuff up about 3 years ago but concentrated mostly on acoustic, since I'm in condo-living where plugging in the electric causes more problems that it's worth sometimes. It turned out to be a good thing, though, since I seem to have grown more on acoustic in 3 years than I did after 6 or 7 years of electric...mostly fingerstyle.

 

My acoustic is the same one I've had since 1988, a Yamaha FG-400a. It was always servicable as something to play back when I focused more on electric, but now that I've gotten into this acoustic thing, I'd like to upgrade.

 

This weekend I saw a used 1984 Yairi DY74C going for just under $700. To me, it sounded every bit or better than many of the new Martins/Taylors et.al. going for $1000 and up. I don't know much about acoustics, though, and have no idea if this is a good, fair or bad price on something like this. It had electronics (I didn't get around to plugging in) and seems to be in good condition. As far as I can tell it's spruce with rosewood, ebony fingerboard (but I'm a novice on woods).

 

Any thoughts? I'm really leaning toward it, since the other guitar I'd been looking at getting, a Larrivee 03, just didn't seem nearly as full. Maybe that has something to do with age, I don't know.