Jon and theleveller, I'd be amazed if you could buy any Lowden for under £2.5k nowadays (I may be wrong, but that's going on prices I have seen lately). I have two old Lowdens and they're beautiful. Seagull, a Canadian brand, make decent budget guitars - you get a lot for what you pay for. But I think the best advice is go to lots of shops with guitars in your budget range and just play them. Of course, there are 'good' guitars and 'bad' guitars, but within the range of good ones in any price range there's a lot which is personal preference: size, tone, neck width, 'feel', etc. If you play lots of guitars it will, I hope, soon become obvious what your own preferences are.