Shallow, muffled and cutting out the top exactly describes my Texan before I traded it. My luthier mate Ian (Chsholm) once owned a cedar top Gibson J45 - the more expensive cousin to the Epiphone Texan - and sold it for precisely the same reasons.

He uses spruce of various persuasions - Sitka, Engelmann, etc. - for his constructions.

Interesting comment from Matt above on trying out guitars in shops. There's often a problem in playing new guitars that haven't woken up. My Chisholm 00 was very "dry" when I first acquired it but, month by month as I played it in, it grew demonstrably warmer and louder, until it now sounds as full as can be. Lowdens are a case in point. I've tried new ones and s/h ones and, without exception, the s/h ones were utterly reponsive - full of projection even at low volume.