Acoustic-Electric Recommendations

I know this has to be the wrong place because I never check these threads, so I apologize deeply in advanced.

I am in the market for a new acoustic-electric guitar. I want a higher quality than my current Fender acoustic-electric. I can spend upwards of $1500. (give or take a few hundred, nothing over $2000)

I'd like to avoid buying from Musician's Friend as that's where I bought my acoustic electric from and the machine heads have given me trouble since.

I have looked at Ovation, Taylor, Fender, and Yamaha APX.

Any suggestions on a good higher end acoustic-electric model for my price range? I checked out Schetcher as well, any advice with those? I want to go try out a few different acoustic guitars before I put the money down and all, but I really have no idea what would be a great model.

Any help will help me a lot!

I'm not sure of the price range, but check this baby out - it looks great to me.

My first choice, if I had that kind of cash to spend, would be a Taylor. Martin also makes some excelent guitars in that price range as well. You really need to go out and try them though.

One question I had was why the lower-end Taylors are still much more expensive than an Ovation. Is it because, even at a lower end, the Taylors are higher quality than most acoustics, or just price inflation?

Anyone have a series range of the Taylors? I am going Saturday to a local music store that has some and I wanted to have some idea on which to try out.

What are you concidering the lower range Taylors? Each model is constructed of different materials, and has differnt amounts of "pretty" details. None of them are "low range" per say. I'd suggest trying them all out. The different woods and different shapes will give them different tones, so use your ears and hands to decide... not your eyes and what anyone else says.

I was going by the series number really. I saw the 100 series is under a thousand and the 200 just around a thousand and so forth.

I was trying to see if the 100 series is a comparable guitar with a higher end guitar of another manufacturer. I guess I will have to just try out what I can though to really get a sense of it.