Nothing quite compares to the warm, lush, chorus-y sound of strums and well-articulated arpeggios played on a 12-string acoustic guitar. Whether you’re trying to cut through the mix, fill out your collection, or take it to the stage, this list has something in every price range.
Guild F-512
This high-end jumbo has a solid AAA Sitka spruce top, solid Indian rosewood back and sides, and scalloped Adirondack spruce bracing, and is available with an optional pickup.
$4,099 street
Taylor 254ce
A Venetian cutaway offers upper-fret access on this 12, which features the company’s grand auditorium body, a Sitka spruce top, layered rosewood back and sides, and Expression System 2 electronics.
$1,199 street
Martin Grand J-16E 12-String
This jumbo is constructed with a spruce top, East Indian rosewood back and sides, and the company’s high-performance taper neck profile. Fishman Matrix VT Enhance electronics are included.
$1,349 street
Ovation Timeless Balladeer Deep Contour 12-String
Featuring a deep contour Lyrachord body and a pearl oak leaf rosette, this 12 also includes the company’s OCP1K pickups and OP-Pro preamp.
$1,064 street
Breedlove Oregon Concerto 12-String CE
Featuring a locally sourced myrtlewood top and a concerto body style, this acoustic 12 also has a maple neck and LR Baggs EAS VTC electronics.
$2,799 street
Epiphone Hummingbird 12-String
Inspired by the Gibson classic, this cherry sunburst square-shoulder dreadnought includes the model’s signature pickguard design on a solid Sitka spruce top and includes a Fishman Sonitone pickup system.
$899 street
Takamine GD30CE-12
This dreadnought is an affordable entry into 12-string acoustics and comes with a solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides, plus an onboard preamp.
$669 street
Godin A12 Natural SG
The chambered body—made of maple and Canadian Laurentian basswood—of this 12 sets it apart, as does the custom Godin transducer and top-mounted preamp.
$1,659 street
ESP TL-12
The sleek rock ’n’ roll looks of this thinline 12 is sure to stand out onstage. Features include Fishman
electronics, a spruce top, and a mahogany body.
$749 street
Yamaha FG820 12-String
The most budget-friendly model on this list still packs a punch, with a solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and scalloped bracing.
$379 street
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Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
