I was in the Music Villa in Bozeman three or four years ago and played Martins, Taylors and Gibsons. The Gibson J45 was easily the best as far as I'm concerned. A couple of years later I was in Gibson's Memphis factory shop and again it was the J45 that I found to be the best acoustic guitar there (they only sold Gibsons of course!)

It's not just J45s, though. A fellow performer at Wimborne last week turned up with his new Gibson L200 Emmy Lou Harris signature model. A beautiful guitar, only surpassed by my 1964 SJN Country Western..........