Well I have purchased some very nice acoustic guitars recently. Both were amazingly cheap for the quality. One was a Martinez brand parlor-size guitar that I bought for a friend at work so she could give it to her daughter for Christmas. This thing was the little guitar they always had on display underneath the electric guitars. One day months ago I picked it up as I was waiting for Steve (the owner of the store) to come back from serving a customer. I was stunned at how beautiful the sound was. I had tried parlor-sized guitars before and didn't really think much of them.. they never sounded like a proper guitar.. but this.. this resonated exactly like a full size guitar.. beautiful! Anyway.. has a decent electronic tuner built in but is not wired up with a pick-up. Later, when I enquired on the price I was shocked that it was only $119.00 (about $99 USD). It made the perfectly priced gift for that lady's daughter.
The other was a Ashton Music brand classical guitar that I gave my Dad for Christmas. I don't mind classical guitars but having grown so attached to the stratocaster electric guitar feel, it just doesn't interest me. I still know a nice guitar when I hear it though and it had all the 21st century features: 4 band EQ + sweeping mid-range resonance freq knob and of course the pick-up system to go with it. Not only that but it has both a XLR jack and a 1/4 inch jack!! Built into the EQ section is a proper chromatic auto and manual tuner with a proper bypass. And even though the body has a cut-away, it still resonates beautifully as if it was the traditional shape. This was an amazing $199 AUD (which would be about $169 USD)... so cheap.. yet so good. I attached a picture of it.. though it looks awful in this picture.
The moral of these stories is that you can find some very nice guitars for very reasonable prices if you ignore the brands and look at the price tag first. That's what I do.. because there's no point over buying when there is a beautiful guitar sitting right at your feet that just doesn't happen to be a Fender, or an Ibanez or a Gibson..
