In this roundup, we review four 12-string acoustic guitars priced from approximately $650 to $1,000. It’s a price range intended to be accessible to most serious players: high enough to yield a quality instrument, but low enough to be justifiable to those who might want to dabble with the format while remaining dedicated to their 6-string playing. Each of the instruments tested here has a solid spruce top, a single cutaway, and an undersaddle pickup with onboard preamp for instant gig-readiness.

Be aware that playing a 12-string requires some adjustment. Such guitars are often, although not always, based around a bigger body, and they typically have fatter, wider necks to allow space for all those strings to vibrate (and to some extent, to withstand the tension produced by the extra strings). Most obviously, there’s more for your fretting fingers to grapple with, and you can find your hand and wrist aching after your first few extended sessions with a 12-string. Fingerpicking is also more challenging, and it takes practice to get your fingertips, nails, or fingerpicks to accurately slip between those pairs of strings on the fly. Playing 12-string also takes more picking-hand muscle because the instrument’s firmly braced top requires extra energy to get it moving for a satisfactory sound.

A minor detail, but one worth noting, is that all four guitars come equipped with a neck-heel strap button, which shows these makers intend you to take these instruments onstage. All guitars were tested through a range of conventional tube guitar amps and solid-state acoustic amps, and a club-sized Mackie P.A. system.

Giannini Craviola GWSCRA12 ELX

Best known for its quality classical guitars, Brazilian maker Giannini cut a striking figure with the release of its asymmetrical Craviola models in 1969. The 12-string version was popular for a time on the folk scene. The series has been reintroduced to North America this year after a period of absence from the market and, as well as being the most affordable guitar in this roundup, the Craviola GWSCRA12 ELX (list $689/street $519) is also the only one manufactured in this hemisphere. Tranquillo Giannini started building classical guitars in São Paulo in 1900, and was a considerable force in the South American guitar market by the 1930s. The full sound and unique look of the Craviola 12-string appealed to players gripped by the folk revival—in which the 12-string often played a starring role—and even Jimmy Page made frequent live appearances with the model.

The shape, conceived by Brazilian guitarist Paulinho Nogueira and patented by Giannini, is best described as a sandwich made from a mandocello-like (or teardrop shaped) bass side married to a slightly melted, deep-cutaway concert-sized treble side, with a Selmer-like D soundhole. Aside from the visuals, two of the most notable aspects of the unusual shape are the broad expanse of top behind the bridge, and the fact that the waistless upper body digs into your ribcage a little more than most hourglass-shaped acoustic guitars. That said, a relatively shallow body depth of 31/2" makes it pretty comfortable on the lap.

The Craviola’s solid Sitka spruce top is joined by laminated pau ferro/morado back and sides, a cedar neck, and a morado fretboard and bridge. The internal braces also appear to be of cedar, and there’s access to a hex-key trussrod nut through the soundhole. A B-Band preamp with 3-band EQ, presence, and volume controls translates the signal from the electret film pickup mounted beneath the saddle piece in a fairly traditional pin bridge. This instrument is very solidly put together, and it’s a funky and very appealing guitar overall, but there’s a certain dichotomy at play here: On one hand, it has the feel of a more expensive instrument; on the other, a few minor blemishes are apparent on close inspection, including a 1/8" spot near the end of the headstock edge where the amber finish didn’t adhere, a very small dimple in the top finish, a little filler in places around the top binding, and some glue drips in places around the kerfing. I’m willing to forgive all of these, though, given the overall quality for the money.

Performance

The Craviola’s wide, yet thin neck is pretty easy to get to grips with, even considering its 17/8" nut width, which is not extreme for a 12-string, but offers more breadth than many 6-string players might be used to. The guitar arrived with a very playable setup right out of the box, with a low action that induced some slight, but not overly troublesome buzzing in the region between the 10th and 14th frets. On the whole, it’s a very approachable 12-string. Given the elongated headstock, the breed tends to be a little neck-heavy, and the Craviola is no exception. But the waistless bass-side provides a natural brace and counterbalance in playing position, and it’s easy to keep the neck at a comfortable angle without taxing the fretting hand.

Played acoustically, the Craviola has decent depth of tone, and is well balanced with a distinctive sheen in the highs. It produces considerable volume when you hit it hard enough to get the top moving, and can be just a touch brittle in the highs (although that should mellow with age), but remains fairly consistent across the frequency spectrum. Lows aren’t deficient as such, but aren’t particularly pronounced either. Plugged in, the efficient B-Band A3.2 preamp does a great job of translating the Craviola’s tone through your amp, considering this is a single-input system with only an undersaddle pickup and no added microphone (which is true of all the guitars in this review). There’s plenty of the percussive zing that helps make electro-acoustic timbres useful in their own right, with enough warmth and girth to keep things from getting strident.

Alvarez AJ60SC/12 NAT

This big jumbo takes us up a couple notches in terms of depth and voice from the Giannini we just sampled and the Yamaha to follow, and is actually more in line with some of the more popular 12-string models from the instrument’s boom days—the Guild F412 and Gibson J-200-12. Like these, the Alvarez is a deep-bodied acoustic made from spruce and maple, designed for volume, projection, and note definition. At first glance, the AJ60SC/12 (list $849/street $599) looks like what a 12-string in this price range wants to be when it grows up, and that impression carries on through feel and sound when you sit with it a while. Guitars like this are one of the reasons so many folkies and singer-songwriters turned to acoustic 12-strings in the first place: They not only offer a lot of sound in the harmonic sense, they also shout that orchestra-in-the-hand from the hilltops, and they certainly get you heard.

The three-piece maple neck on this guitar is a broad fellow, with a 17/8" width at the nut, and a full C-shaped profile—noticeably fuller than the Giannini’s—that’s likely to take some adjustment for many players. The solid Englemann spruce top has an appealing, if somewhat varied grain, and there’s a slight degree of flame in the laminated maple back and sides. It’s an attractive and very well assembled instrument both inside and out, and blends traditional elements with elegantly understated modern touches, as evidenced in the single diagonal 12th-fret position marker in the chocolate-brown rosewood fretboard, the ivory binding and three-ply back stripe, the mother-of-pearl soundhole ring and headstock inlay, and other appointments. A host of other details indicate that Alvarez is just as interested in sound and performance as in looks—the scalloped, tapered X-bracing that should keep the big top sturdy, yet allow it to really get moving, and the inclusion of Elixir strings at the factory, to name but two. Also, the System 600T MkII preamp on this guitar is the most versatile unit in this roundup. It has a 3-band EQ, plus a mid-frequency adjustment control, a frequency notch control for squelching feedback, a level control for the undersaddle pickup, an auxiliary level control (with –20dB pad switch) for an optional soundhole pickup or condenser microphone (neither of which is included in the package), a phase switch (for matching the onboard piezo and optional pickup or mic), a master volume knob, and a tuner.

Performance

A bountiful, robust design such as this is perhaps less likely to appeal to the casual or small-handed player, or one who is well adjusted to a particular 6-string and only wants to flirt with a 12 now and then. But the AJ60SC/12’s girthsome neck and bovine body are par for the course when you step into jumbo country, and this is actually a pretty smooth-playing example of the breed. The very resonant setup wears an action that approaches a medium string height from the 10th fret and beyond, but these big-bodied guitars are made for thrumming out some serious rhythm, and Alvarez is correct to keep the strings slightly elevated and buzz-free. Lay into it with a heavy pick, and the AJ60SC/12 rewards you with impressive volume and firm, round tones. This is a very linear, yet rich acoustic instrument, with mellow lows that avoid getting flabby even when you dig in, and a crystalline tinkle in the highs that lends a lacy appeal to the voice. Tasty stuff.

Through each of the test rigs the versatile preamp broadcasts this belter admirably. With the EQs flat, the bass is, surprisingly, just a hair boxy, but that is easily remedied after a brief fiddle with the

System 600T MkII. Otherwise, even with this single-pickup system there’s a good blend of shimmer and thump in amplified chord work, with enough midrange punch to help lead lines or fingerpicking cut through. Also, note that this preamp has a lot of gain. Given the big, deep body, this can make it rather prone to feedback, but the notch control helps you nail the errant frequency pretty quickly.

Yamaha APX700-12 NT

Our review sample in this instance is the prototype of a new model in Yamaha’s popular APX range of electro-acoustics, and on this evidence it promises to be a worthy addition to a long-standing and very successful line. With its compact concert-sized body (graduating from 36/16" to 39/16" in depth), and reasonable 113/16" nut width, it’s an easy leap for the habitual 6-string player. The APX700-12 NT (list $919/street $649) has a solid spruce top, laminated nato back and sides, three-piece nato neck (with splices at the heel and headstock), rosewood fretboard, and rosewood pin bridge.

A thin polyurethane gloss finish has been flawlessly applied to the radiant, tight-grained top, and is beautifully contrasted by creamy ivory binding around the top, back, fretboard, and headstock, with added five-ply black/cream purfling inside the top edge, and single-ply black at the back and headstock. Together with the abalone swirls around the soundhole ring and the mother-of-pearl position markers and headstock inlays, it makes for an elegant package. A peek inside reveals that the bracing and kerfing work is also extremely tidy, and all in all, it’s a truly noteworthy instrument in its price range. This APX is a sterling example of the kind of quality Yamaha’s Taiwanese manufacturer is capable of achieving these days. This model carries Yamaha’s new System 56 preamp with an onboard tuner, 3-band EQ, a slider for adjustable midrange frequency, and a master volume—a single-source system that takes its input from a piezo pickup mounted beneath the bridge saddle.

Performance

This prototype APX700-12 proved smoothly playable, yet buzz-free right from the factory, and required nary a tweak. The neck’s rounded but not overly clubby D profile sits extremely comfortably in the hand, and gives plenty of support across the palm to help you fret this abundance of strings without cramping up. Of course, the relatively narrower fretboard (in 12-string terms, at least) makes fingerpicking more of a challenge, as there’s less room for fingertips to pick distinctive string pairs, but this style of playing isn’t the 12-string’s forte anyway, and it’s still manageable with care and practice.

You couldn’t credit this Yamaha with particularly ballsy lows when played acoustically, yet it isn’t especially shy in the bass either. Mids and highs are more pronounced, with a lot of punch and sizzle that works great for contemporary pop and acoustic rock. Plugged in, with all EQs set flat, the lows are more solid, while mids are a hair recessed, but this is all easily adjusted to taste with the simple, but effective System 56 preamp. It’s a 12-string that is predisposed to jangle more than to roll out mellow, nuanced instrumental tunes, but it’s a versatile guitar even so, largely very well balanced, and a pleasure to play. And while the preamp carries no dedicated control for notching feedback, it’s pretty easy to home in on unwanted resonances with the EQ and midrange sliders.

Takamine EG523SC-12

In both proportions and materials, the jumbo-bodied EG523SC-12 (list $969/street $689) is very similar to the Alvarez AJ60SC/12, although the Takamine has a shorter 25" scale length, and is the only guitar in this roundup that wears jumbo frets. As such, it’s another instrument inspired by the genre-leading Guild F412, with a solid spruce top for warmth and resonance, and laminated flamed maple back and sides for definition, high-end sparkle, and projection. The spruce in this top has a rather uneven grain, which widens considerably in some places, along with a couple of minor irregularities. In fact, I find the imperfections attractive, and they shouldn’t affect tone unduly, although consistency of grain is generally

considered one of the factors in judging the quality of a piece of spruce as tonewood. The braces in the top’s X-braced system are gently scalloped, and should allow this thick slice of spruce to get moving. A pinless rosewood bridge differentiates this instrument a little from anything we have seen so far: The strings anchor in a notch at the rear of the bridge before passing out through a slot and over a pair of compensated saddle pieces—one for the E, A, D, G pairs, and another for the B and high-E pairs. The arrangement makes string loading quicker and easier—something generally welcomed on a 12-string—although the more direct tension felt by this design (versus a pin bridge with the strings’ ball ends anchored at right angles into a bridge block or plate beneath the top) necessitates the use of two screws to help hold the unit in place. These are hidden beneath black dots at the rear edge of the bridge.

The rosewood fretboard atop this instrument’s three-piece maple neck carries luxurious V-block inlays, with abalone wedges set within mother-of-pearl blocks, which is echoed by the abalone ring at the center of the multi-ringed soundhole rosette. A big, swirly, multi-pointed tortoise pickguard completes the picture, and harkens back somewhat to the Western roots of these big jumbos. It’s a cohesive, attractive whole—well thought out and well put together. This is another big neck to contend with, bearing a rounded C profile and a width of 129/32" just in front of the nut. (Oddly, the nut itself on this example falls 1/32" short of the full neck width.) Again, small-handed players might struggle here, but it’s par for the course—those 12 strings need room to vibrate, and tighter dimensions would make playing difficult for more advanced or thick-fingered musicians. Takamine’s

TK-40 preamp on the forward edge of the upper bass bout receives its input from a piezo pickup mounted in the bridge. It has a 3-band EQ, a mid-contour switch, an adjustable feedback notch filter, EQ bypass, a master volume, and a tuner. It’s a comprehensive system with a proven track record, and should do all that’s required to get your jangle on stage without hassle.

Performance

Strummed acoustically for rhythm accompaniment, the EG535SC-12 sure punches out a lot of sound. There’s excellent projection here, but note definition remains taught and precise within chords, even when hit hard. It’s obvious to the ear why the spruce-and-maple combination has become one of the standards for this type of acoustic 12-string: Despite all the airspace within that big, deep body, the sound never gets lost in the woolly haze that cripples some jumbos and dreadnoughts. Even with all this sonic information happening—the octave and unison pairs ringing out with a multiplicity of harmonic action—individual notes remain distinct in the brew.

Arpeggios and lead lines benefit from the same cutting power, and ring true and sustain long. It isn’t an overly refined tone in terms of warmth, depth, and texture, but it does the job it sets out to do with muscle and aplomb.

Plugged in, the EG535SC-12 and TK-40 preamp combo deliver a real powerhouse of amplified acoustic noisemaking. It’s a simple preamp to use, but offers plenty of variation for tonal texturing and feedback elimination, and does all of its intended jobs darn well. Also, there’s enough gain on tap here to ensure you’ve got plenty of oomph and staying power, even amid a full band mix running through the mixer. All in all, an excellent package for the dedicated weekend gigster or a professional performer on a budget.

Verdict

These are all fun and effective instruments, and each has its place in the market. The Alvarez and Takamine could be the choices for players who want to kick out that 12-string thrang with volume and authority. The Takamine’s voice is just a shade fuller and richer than the Alvarez’s—both acoustically and amplified—despite the very similar designs and construction. That said, the Alvarez sounds very good, and offers a lot of guitar at the $600 ballpark street price. For your extra $100 or so, the Takamine also gives you a little more flame in the maple, as well as more elaborate fretboard adornments, although the Alvarez’s simplicity might be more to many players’ tastes anyway. Having said all this, the Yamaha might be the most popular all-rounder here: It’s an easy conversion for smaller-handed players or those accustomed to smaller 6-string necks, and it still offers a lot of sound and great playability in a fairly compact package. The Giannini Craviola is the oddball of the bunch, but it has a lot of appeal, offering its own look and tone, and giving you plenty of guitar for the money. It’s very playable, sounds great, is made in the Western hemisphere, and is guaranteed to help you stand out on stage. Easily a good value at five-and-a-half or so bills.