I haven't owned a standard six-string guitar for close to forty years, but the best 12-string I ever owned was, believe it or not, a Washburn. It didn't deserve to be particularly good -- but, somehow, it was. Excellent tone, and it would stay in tune for days. A freak of nature. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the best 12-string Washburn ever built.

Sadly, about ten years ago, the frets had worn down enough that it wasn't really playable any more. I took it to a luthier who said that it wasn't worth repairing -- a 12-string with a good sound simply cannot be braced well enough to last forever. He told me that it was wiser to save the cost of the fretwork to apply to a new instrument.

So I now have a Taylor and an Ibanez. Neither one matches up to the Washburn. The Taylor's sound is almost as good, but it's not as stable in terms of tuning, and it wanders more when capoed.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that you never know what will work. :-)

I could list a few other almost-guitars I have, but the only one I do much with is a Cordoba requinto -- nylon-strung 6-string tuned half an octave high. It's a lot of fun, but the strings they supplied are too heavy, and so are the strings sold as requinto strings. They snap in days -- before they even have time to settle in. I haven't figured out the right gauges yet. Someone really needs to make some real requinto strings!