I have a nice old Fender acoustic that I bought in Brighton, UK in about 1983. Reason I bought it was that it was the first acoustic Fender I had ever seen, it played and sounded good in the shop and looked good as well. The name "Fender" is inlaid on the headstock in mother-of-pearl (but later models I have seen just have a tacky-looking transfer).

Anyway, I still have this guitar and (IMHO) it still looks and sounds pretty good. I don't know what the new ones are like, but I can only give my sample-of-one a good report. It seems to be sensitive to the state of the strings - the sound is best when the strings are new.

Going OT for a few other comments: on another point raised above by Rick Fielding,I keep my Fender - and my other guitars - in our music room, where they are subjected to all sorts of other sounds from music students playing piano and other instruments. I reckon that this really loosens up the sound of a guitar, but have never understood why until I started reading this board.

Like catspaw49 above, my own guitar collection is a result of the workings of fate over the years. I first learned to play on a blonde Hofner President F-hole: a lovely guitar, which i bought for fifteen pounds in a Coventry junk-shop. But it was damaged in a house fire and never sounded the same afterwards. During my student days, I had several different acoustics, mostly low-range cheapo models, bought second-hand and sold on with no regrets. When I started work, I bought the Fender new because I liked it and had some spare cash at the time.

I bought an Epiphone acoustic later, primarily to keep at my girlfriend's flat (before I moved from London to Brussels) so I didn't have to carry a guitar across the Channel every weekend. And I've still got it. No-one loves Epi's, but this one has been abused to hell and back: I take it with me when I go sailing and it lives in a corner of the boat, subject to sometimes violent motion, damp and salt air. But it still sounds good and I've kept it because I have no emptional capital invested in it, so I can travel around with it without having to worry about it getting damaged or lost.

I like 12-strings, so I bought an Ovation Celebrity 12 three years ago, with some redundancy money. This one may have been a mistake. It sounds OK when amplified, but very thin when played acoustically. I don't like to have to plug in when I play at home, so will probably sell it on soon. Any offers?