Best Gibson Acoustic Guitar – 5 Great Choices for you

Gibson guitars are super popular and loved by millions of people. No matter what, if you are just a beginner, an intermediate, or an advanced level guitar player, you definitely heard about Gibson. Aside from their extremely popular Gibson Les Paul series, they made a glorious name among the acoustic guitar series. 

So we present this article with the best Gibson acoustic guitars. Instead of naming all “over the top” guitars, we tried to put guitars from different categories. Keeping that in mind, we made this list with the best budget, best for live performance, best for solo artists, best for beginners, and the best all-rounder Gibson guitar we could think of.

If you are looking for a Japanese Yamaha guitar or a best-seller America Taylor guitar, we got you covered too!

The line up at a glance

We’ve done in-depth loads of researches through many various products and chosen five different models to compare. Have a look through all our pros and cons for each one to find your best Gibson acoustic guitars.

Our Picks For Top 5 Best Gibson Acoustic Guitar

Gibson Hummingbird was the second-most expensive acoustic guitar from Gibson guitars. They are pricey, to say the least, but being the third-most-expensive guitar, you can already tell the guitar is flawless. The guitar is perfect to the point it won an award from the Best Acoustic Guitar’s Player’s Choice for the Dreadnought Category.

The guitar provided a wide range of sounds, from being loud and brave to soft and sweet it quickly became popular for all types of genres. The sound is also perfectly balanced. The treble and the bass are also synchronized to put out an output with outstanding clarity. The guitar is mostly famous for its versatility. From blues to folk, rock, and country, this baby can handle everything with ease.

Let’s go through the specs of the Gibson Hummingbird. You can expect to get everything premium with a $3000 guitar. The guitar simply cannot go wrong with the tonewood and shape. The Hummingbird comes in a dreadnought shape. Gibson’s choice of wood is Mahogany. The back and the sides are made out of premium Mahogany and paired the top with Sitka Spruce.

Mahogany is very well-known for creating a rich and warm tone, and the Sitka spruce for its punchy high frequencies.  The guitar has a round profile mahogany neck with a scale length of 24.75”. The fingerboard is made out of rosewood with a radius of 12”. There are 20 frets available. The neck is attached with a compound dovetail neck-to-body joint system. Like any premium guitar, the Hummingbird also comes with premium bone nuts and saddle. The pickguard is a custom 0.60” Hummingbird. The nitrocellulose finish makes the guitar look amazing

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Gibson Slash J-45 is a custom guitar by Gibson collaborating with the legend himself, Slash from Guns N Roses. The guitar is super comfortable. The legend used the guitar throughout his career and also his choice of acoustic guitar. The guitar is powerful and loud. It has an amazing chugging tone to it while strumming. It has an amazing and punchy tone, with good projection and perfect harmonic overtones.

The guitar comes with a custom LR Baggs’s VTC acoustic pickup system. It gives the guitar a nice clean sound while enhancing the coupling between the guitar and pickup. The sound is just amazing and perfect, to say the least. It also comes with an onboard preamp and removable volume control. It is the ideal choice for a live performance.

The Gibson Slash J-45 is around shoulder dreadnought shaped guitar. The shape is also known as Slash Custom J-45. It is a right-handed guitar. By the name, you can already tell it comes in a vermillion Burst. The November Rain version has the feature as this, but the only difference is in color.

The top is made out of Sitka Spruce, and the back and the side are made out of Mahogany. It has a traditional hand-scalloped X bracing and comes with a Nitrocellulose finish. When it comes to the neck, it has a custom slash round profile with mahogany wood. The scale length is 24.75” while the fingerboard is made out of Rosewood with a 16” radius. Like any traditional acoustic, it has 20frets.

One of the unique features of the guitar is its Mother-of-Pearl inlays. The nickel tuner plating and Grover Rotomatics saddle with Slash signature truss rod cover absolutely beat any guitar when it comes to aesthetics.

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The Gibson songwriter is a high-end acoustic. The guitar is small and has a nice cutaway, making it perfect for playing solo on an acoustic. The cutaway gives you access to more frets, and more frets mean you can hit those high notes without almost facing no challenge.

The hand-scalloped bracing gives as much as resonances you can want. The solid rosewood and backsides make the guitar sound beautiful and adds a complex and rich overtone to the sound. The action of the guitar is also spot on and gives the guitar good playability. This beautiful guitar is the dream guitar for many acoustic soloists.

The Gibson songwriter is a handcrafted guitar in Bozeman. It has a solid Sitka spruce with rosewood back and sides. The neck is pure mahogany with a rounded profile adding more playability.

The Dovetail neck-to-body construction comes with an angle of 3 degrees and the joint found on the 14th fret. With 20 frets, the scale length goes to 25.5”. It has a 1930 Gibson X-bracing pattern with Fishman Aura Ellipse electronics. Lastly, unlike most premium guitars, it has a lacquer finish.

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The Gibson L-00 is a premium, comparably low price, small-bodied, and extremely good sounding acoustic. You can usually expect a premium level acoustic guitar to go over $2000 to $3000, especially if it is a Gibson. But this bad boy is cheaper than your other Gibson while keeping the premium status.

The guitar has very good playability with good sound. The craftsmanship is amazing. You can hold the guitar and feel like you are holding a million-dollar guitar. The guitar is most suited for professional players who need a premium guitar more than anything but cannot afford the fortune, not as much as other Gibson acoustics.

The Gibson L-00 is the reincarnation of the legendary 1932 L-00. It is handcrafted. The guitar comes in a small body shape. The front is made out of Sitka spruce, while the back and the sides are made out of Mahogany. It has a traditional hand-scalloped X bracing. The neck material is also Mahogany with a slim taper profile.

The fingerboard is rosewood, but unlike most other acoustics, it has 19 frets with a scale length of 24,75”. The radius of the fingerboard is 12” and has Mother-of-pearl dot inlays. When it comes to hardware, the tuner has nickel plating with a rectangle closed slot bridge. The saddle and the bridge pins are both made out of tusq.

The guitar has a custom made L-00 pickguard. One of the key features of the guitar is its LR Baggs™ VTC under-saddle pickups. The guitar has a nice nitrocellulose finish to it.

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Gibson J-15 is a great Gibson acoustic guitar. The guitar is not that pricy or premium, so it makes the perfect choice for a beginner. Gibson does not make beginner level guitar. But if you want to start big, this one is perfect. Most Gibson acoustic are premium quality, so a lack of experience in handling guitar can damage your guitar. So being the cheapest Gibson acoustic, this is the perfect one for you.

By the name, you can already tell it belongs to the jumbo series. It comes in a jumbo shape with Sitka spruce top and walnut back and sides. It also has scalloped X bracing with a nitrocellulose finish. The neck material is utile and is an advanced response profile. There are 20 frets with a 24,75” scale length. The fingerboard is made out of walnut.

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Criteria used for evaluation

Type of woods

Different tonewoods sound and feel different. A good tonewood resonates better, gets better with age, and improves the visual. But it comes to us with no surprise; the definition of great sound is subjective as it depends on each individual’s genre and taste.

The spruce is the best choice for the top of the guitar. It gives the guitar tonal properties. Gibson’s choice of wood is Mahogany as it is the more commonly used tonewood as it is famous for its durability. It is also renowned for producing subtle overtones and earthy midrange tonality.

Since every Gibson is made out of Mahogany, what makes a few thousand guitars than another not that expensive guitar? It is the quality of Mahogany. Most of the premium Gibson guitars use premium mahogany wood for the back and the sides.

Body shape

The guitar shapes affect both the sound and the playability. There are many guitar body shapes like the dreadnought, grand auditorium, orchestra, Parlor, and Jumbo. A parlor shaped guitar has a light, focused, and balanced sound. Grand auditorium and orchestra guitar shapes come in outstanding balance, projection, and volume.

The orchestra shape is bigger than the auditorium with more mid-range and has more volume than a concert guitar. They sound good on their own. The dreadnought guitars are larger and more focused on the low frequencies. It is highly famous among flat pickers. It has a boomier sound with a large body and mostly compatible with folk music, especially 60’s folk.

The body shapes also include cutaways. A single-cutaway can give you access to higher notes. It is more prominent among people who tend to play solo or leads. This is exactly why Gibson songwriter is out the best choice for solo guitarists.

Acoustic-Electric

The Gibson Slash J-45 comes with an LR Baggs™ VTC. Since it comes with a high-end preamp it is our choice of guitar for live performance. The preamp also comes with a tuner, volume, and tone control.

So if you plan on playing in an unplugged show or just to play for your own, you can go with pure acoustic guitars from the list. The acoustic-electric guitars are more suitable for plugged performances.

Neck

The neck of your guitar does not affect the tone. But it does put a huge difference when it comes to comfort. Acoustic neck usually has 12 or 14 fret necks. This number of frets is above the guitar body. On a 12th fret neck guitar, the 13th and 14th frets will be on the body.

Thus it will be harder to reach the high notes. Another factor is the neck joint. Most acoustic guitars come with a set neck, which is basically glued. Then there is a bolt-on neck. The advantages of bolt-on necks are they are replaceable, and the guitar with bolt-on necks are cheap.

The dovetail neck joint is the best choice for acoustic guitars. Dive tail necks are structurally strong. It also helps the vibration of your playing. It can somewhat give your instrument a warm and more fullness in sound.

Fingerboard

The fingerboard is an essential part of a guitar, and your fingerboard must be made out of high-quality material. Woods used for the fingerboards are Rosewood, Maple, and Granadillo.

Rosewood is more preferred for the majority of the player as it is naturally oily and a medium density wood. You can expect your guitar to be lightweight and smooth. The rosewood also provides a warm and soft tone.

The maple is more famous for its stunning visuals. Maple is very dense, and it’s a strong wood. Rosewood is better than maple because the maple fingerboard can be a bit sticky after the finish. So it should come to us with no surprise, you should choose an acoustic with rosewood fingerboard rather than a maple fingerboard.

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Frequently Asked Questions