I just got a Maton (made in Australia) BG808L. This has the body size of a classical but a more pronounced waist (it is shaped very much like the Taylor of the same size.) The top is solid Sitka Spruce and the fingerboard and bridge are rosewood. The rest is Australian woods.

What I like about it is, in common with some other small bodied guitars, it is slightly wider at the nut than most dreadnaughts which suits my fat fingers. On the other hand, the neck has a slightly slimmer profile than some others which suits my short fingers when I want to use my thumb.

It came set up with D'Addario EJ16 strings (Phosphor Bronze Light) and it sounds good with them so I will stick with them a while. I have gravitated toward Plectrum AC112 over the last half-year.

I just bought my first guitar about a year ago. It is an Epiphone PR200 (Dreadnaught) with a Nitro-Satin finish. I was really happy with it until I started to get good (relative term) at fingerpicking and then the booming bass began to get on my nerves. Also the narrow fingerboard and the large body was causing some physical difficulties.

I saw a Sisme Model A (made in Italy) really cheap in a pawn shop a while ago. It was a wreck, but I bought it and did what repairs I could myself and paid for some others. It has the shape and size of a classical, but less depth. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a heavy neck and has no truss rod, so I couldn't go better than extra-light strings; but it felt so much better that I decided to save up for a small-bodied guitar of more standard construction.

Chet, I didn't know that underloading could harm the guitar. Can't you adjust the truss rod accordingly?

By the way, here is a question for the experts. A steel string guitar seems to always have the place where the strings go over the bridge (be it the bridge itself or the saddle) angled while a classical guitar doesn't. This is of course to compensate for intonation; but is it for the strings or the body design. That is, if you do put nylon strings on a steel-string guitar, should you remove the angle of the saddle?

Murray