Just so hard to understand so many kinds of body sizes/shapes for guitars

I've been doing research to buy a good guitar under $1000. Man, there are just so many different kinds of body sizes/shapes for a guitar, and different manufacturers use different terminologies like Concert, Grand Concert, OO, OOO, Auditorium, etc. which is giving me quite a hard time for my research.

What I found so far is Taylor Grand Concert models might be what I want, because I'd like to focus more on fingerstyle playing, and Taylor's website says the Grand Concert model is designed for fingerstyle players. However, the Taylor Grand Concert models are beyond my budget, and I'm researching to map Taylor's Grand Concert to other manufacturers' terminologies.

I don't know where you live but my best advice is get to as many guitar stores as possible and play as many different makes and sizes as you can. I own a Taylor 512 which is a grand concert, a Martin 000-15M and a Eastman E100 LTD which is 00 size. The Taylor grand concert is a little bigger than a 00 but a little smaller than a 000.

The 00 is probably your best bet if wanting to stay smaller. A 000 or a OM is really the same thing in body size. All guitars including dreadnaught can be finger picked successfully but small bodies don't alway work well for AGGRESSIVE strumming

DownUpDave said:

I don't know where you live but my best advice is get to as many guitar stores as possible and play as many different makes and sizes as you can. I own a Taylor 512 which is a grand concert, a Martin 000-15M and a Eastman E100 LTD which is 00 size. The Taylor grand concert is a little bigger than a 00 but a little smaller than a 000.

The 00 is probably your best bet if wanting to stay smaller. A 000 or a OM is really the same thing in body size. All guitars including dreadnaught can be finger picked successfully but small bodies don't alway work well for AGGRESSIVE strumming

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Thank you DownUpDave!

I'm living in Seattle area. I'm not that comfortable to try guitars in stores as it usually makes me feel guilty if i end up buying nothing after trying a lot.

Yeah, the Taylor 512 12 fret is actually exactly what I want after lots of researches, just it's beyond my budget, and I'm not a fan of used ones.

Btw, What do you think about the Taylor's Academic Series?

Jo3x said:

Thank you DownUpDave!

I'm living in Seattle area. I'm not that comfortable to try guitars in stores as it usually makes me feel guilty if i end up buying nothing after trying a lot.

Yeah, the Taylor 512 12 fret is actually exactly what I want after lots of researches, just it's beyond my budget, and I'm not a fan of used ones.

Btw, What do you think about the Taylor's Academic Series?

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I was going to recommend the Academy series. I bought was a Taylor GS mini and the salesman who I know and trust was really pushing the Academy over the GS mini because it is full size with a normal scale length. I wanted something "small" so went with the GS mini. I have played the Academy and they are very good.

The three guitars I listed in my first post were all purchased used. You can save about 25%-40% off new. Just some food for thought