My Martin/Sigma DM-5 dreadnought acoustic guitar was made in Japan in the early 1970's I believe.
It has 20 frets, with access up to the 14th fret. It has a solid spruce top, rosewood back and sides, and a rosewood bridge and fingerboard. There is a very understated binding and rosette, and simple dot inlays on the fingerboard.

The neck is substantial but very manageable with a slight radius, very typical of Martin guitars. It allows chords to be barred at the first fret position with moderate ease. Access to anything beyond the 14th fret is next to impossible due to the lack of a cutaway.
Ergonomically, its is a full fize dreadnought guitar which takes getting used to while sitting down due to the thickness, but it is very lightweight due to the thin sides and back and well-designed bracing. It is also what lends itself to the full and robust sound of this guitar.

The Sigma series is basically by all birthright a Martin guitar. It was deisnged by them, and the materials are high quality but manufacturing of them was done overseas in Japan back during a time when most guitars were manufactured in America still. I've played a couple Sigmas in pawn shops that didn't impress me, but this specimen has always given me great sound. Its the only DM-5 I have ever come across.
If you like the Martin dreadnought sound, then you would like this guitar. It has a mellow, sweet sound that projects, with excellent balance between attack and warmth. The thin sides and back allow for maximum body vibration and resonance, especially compared to some new guitars I've played recently that sound dead in comparison to my old DM-5 because the inferior or laminated materials add a lot of weight and resistance to vibration.
I play a lot of folk type strumming and fingerpicking, to acoustic rock, to bluesy single-note runs. The DM-5 stands up well to hard playing with fullness of sound and can be very dynamic in lower volume ranges like in mellow fingerpicking. It is a good all around and versatile acoustic. This guitar is the ruler by which I measure any other guitar in the under $1000, because its hard to find anything in that range that can beat it. Martin no longer offers a guitar under a $1000 that can touch it.

This guitar was made in China. It has 22 frets and is a straight acoustic guitar. (i.e. no electrical components.) The bridge is stock plastic (?) bridge. No setting controls, as it is a straight acoustic. It has a mahogany neck and a rosewood fretboard.

The back of the neck on this guitar is nice and smooth and let's your hand slide easily up and down the neck. Because the guitar needs a set-up, the action is not that great. So I use this guitar as a practice guitar to strengthen my hands and improve my picking and fretting accuracy. As with most dreadnought style acoustics, it is difficult to get to the top notes/last frets of this guitar. I guess if you want to play high note acoustic solos, you need to get an electric acoustic with a cutaway. This guitar is light and easy to move around with. It's not so big that it's not cumbersome to play, which is great. At this price point, this acoustic sounds great. When playing chords, the sound coming out of the sound-hole is big, full and bright. It sounds better than a few thousand dollar acoustic guitars that I've played, in my opinion.

I play for a worship service, and sometimes we play some acoustic tunes. I haven't used this acoustic on stage yet, but I think it would sound great either miked or if I get a pickup for it. Like I said, I love the sound of chords coming out of this thing. Because of the action, playing single notes don't sound that great. You've got to focus on fretting properly instead of zoning in on your vibrato, etc.

- In What Country was it made? (USA, Japan, Mexico, France...)
Like Seagull and various other brands, Norman is basically Godin, so Canadian/US.

This is just a regular dreadnought, but it has a fairly large body and a very thin varnish, so the guitar has bass, it's dynamic (loud when needed) and the top let's the sound through thanks to that thin varnish, something you won't get on most guitars (especially not the black ones with the thick paint...).

The finish is nothing fancy but i really like that basic feel, without being rough: it's not trying to look fancy, and it sounds 'honest'. No messin around!

The neck is ok, although if you want a really easy guitar to play you might want to try a £2000 Taylor... ;-) This is ok, though. The frets on mine were getting worn and it was so expensive to replace them that it was cheaper to change the guitar...!

The neck is quite wide, with jumbo frets. Forget about accessing the higher notes on this one. Norman do cutaway guitars too but they're probably not quite so loud...

The body is quite wide so it can be a little uncomfortable to play when sitting down...

Thanks to the wide body and thin varnish, and choice of woods, this guitar has a very well balanced sound: plenty of bass, of treble and of mids.
Might sound like something you would take for granted but from my experience this isn't often the case. A lot of guitars have no bass or treble and sound aggressive. This one sounds great for pop rhythm, and if you're good enough you can probably get away with a nice solo too, although i haven't really done that much on this one.

The GS 330S is fairly plain and non-descript, with a satin finished cedar top, nato back and sides, no inlays, and a simple rosette, this guitar is no frills. Takamine put there money where it counted for a budget guitar like this.

The neck had a nice feel, fairly similar to a Japanese-made Martin I have. Very adequate.

I think the biggest contributor to the sound of this guitar is the satin finish cedar top. In this price range guitarmakers usually use lower quality and a thick glossy finish is applied to "dress it up" but Takamine has put a very light finish on their cedar top. First of all, cedar is a bit more mellower sounding than spruce and applying such a thin finish allows the top to reverberate more freely, giving a more "open" sound thats not stiff It also equates to more volume, which definitely is the case here as the Takamine projects quite well and respond very well to picking dynamics and fingerpicking.
The GS can handle everything from folk strumming, to single note blues runs.
My only complaint was that I thought it was a bit "thin" sounding, probably due to nato being used for the back and sides instead of more traditional mahogany, which is darker in tone. Selecting the right strings could help compensate, and the guitar was fairly balanced across the spectrum so my perceived lack of "thump" from this model doesn't mean it was shrill or harsh. It was actually quite sweet sounding overall.

The Epiphone Hummingbird HS is made in China. It has a 25.5" scale with frets. It has mahogany sides and back with a solid spruce top, and a rosewood fingerboard. It features pretty standard chrome hardware, split paralellogram fingerboard inlays, and of course the obligatory brilliant sunburst finish that Epiphone calls "Heritage Cherry Sunburtst" along with funky decorative pickguard. I was quite impressed of the quality of the finish on a 300.00 guitar.

The neck had a decent feel, nothing spectacular. At least this guitar is built to mimic the more expensive Gidson model so they already had neck specs to copy. Unfortunately, the action on the guitar I sampled was terrible, I mean absolutely dreadful. Anything beyond the 5th fret was increasingly difficult to fret, and playing anything beyond the 12th fret was almost impossible due to the high action.

Even for a 300.00 guitar, I was not at all impressed with the sound of this guitar. It had a "harsh" tonal quality that made me wonder "why?" I mean, its got a solid spruce top, a fairly large cavity to resonate, but you are left with a shrill bottomless tone.

My Martin DX-1R was made in the USA and has 21 frets and is not an electric-acoustic.

I have loved this guitar since the first time I played it...the neck is unfinished and goes so easy on the fingers, one of the nicest necks I have played and I couldn't believe it for the price. It is very light and is extremely easy to get a nice sound of. I would say the sound is definitely on the brighter, tinnier side, but it does have some nice bottom and fullness as well.

I'm a singer/songwriter and play a lot of shows by myself with this guitar and it always delivers, whether its with or without the external pick up I purchased. I'm into a lot of acoustic guitar orientated music (Bob Dylan, etc) and this has suited me great for playing those kinds of songs.