Not long ago, Bob Conroy and I had a 2 hour ramble through Mandolin Brothers, the "high end" retailer that always has a few hundred guitars in stock. Despite spending a lot of time in the "Rainforest Room" of vintage Brazilian rosewood Martins, etc., the single best sounding guitar on premises in that vist was a brand new, standard Santa Cruz Tony Rice model dreadnought... not a cheap guitar, not one every Mudcatter will have in his or her attic, but 1/10th the price of some at the store that day! Loud, very evenly balanced, crisp, deep... beautiful to hear.