Suggestions for cheap (sub $250) acoustic guitar?

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So I used to play electric when I was a teenager, but long story short, I haven't played in a loooooong time (crappy guitar & amp stopped working, etc.). I've recently gotten the itch to start playing again, so I'm looking for a cheap acoustic to practice on.

I'm probably going to buy one in the next few days, but I just remembered that there are quite a few musicians on this board, so I figured I'd put something up here just in case somebody saw it before then.

I don't have any real specific requirements, just looking for the best steel-string acoustic I can get for the price. Preliminarily, I took a look at the local Guitar Center last night and thought that the Yamaha Gigmaker (I think it's technically an F-125 or something like that) and the Mitchell MD100 looked promising, but I didn't have time to play either of them. I'm also going to take a look at a few other places to see what else is out there.

Any advice or suggestions are appreciated!

[khalpin]

My 2 cents....

Spend some time at Guitar Center playing the guitar you're thinking of buying.  Make sure it feels comfortable, playable and you like the action.  Sure, you can adjust it, but if you're gonna pay less than $250, you're not going to want to spend $50 to have the action adjusted.  Ultimately, it's your comfort level that's the determining factor.  Probably not what you were looking for but...

And also, make sure it will stay in tune after you play it for a while.  Nothing's worse than a guitar that you have to retune after playing it for 10 minutes.

[bass-freq]

Partly restating khalpin here, but here goes ...

I'm sure you realize that you're going to be settling for a less than stellar instrument in that price range, but still there are plenty of good values to be found there.

It seems you're focusing on what you can find locally, but you didn't play any of them yet.  That would be my first piece of advice (I know, I know ... kind of a 'duh' piece of advice) .  From what I've seen, there are a lot of brands with decent offerings in this price range, but none stands out enough where I could say you could trust the brand name without actually playing the instrument. I've actually bought an instrument off the internet sight-unseen before and got a great deal on a killer instrument but that was a $1k instrument.  In this price range, the build quality is going to vary a lot between different instruments of the same model, so you really need to play it first.

Next, when you do play them, make sure to play whatever different ways/styles that you are looking to play and play all the way up the neck to make sure there aren't major fret buzzes, action issues etc.  Try to duplicate as best you can how you would normally play (i.e. standing vs sitting , strumming vs. fingerstyle vs. flatpicking). When listening to your playing, also pay attention to the sustain of the notes and how it sounds when you let notes ring. 

Again, all this may seem obvious to some, but IMO these are the things that matter the most and will help you get the most bang for your buck.  Also, try to get to a couple different stores that have different brands, since most stores only stock a few brand names.

P.S. if you're really looking for brand name suggestions, I think Yamaha is a great place to start.  As bluegrass picker I would also recommend Blueridge.  I seem to recall them having good offerings close to this range, though maybe a little bit higher.

$.02

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Thanks a lot guys, all great advice. It's good to be reminded of all the stuff to check for since I haven't played in so long.

I definitely wasn't planning on buying one without playing it (I'm the opposite of an impulse buy kind of person), I guess I was more interested in whether people had experience as far as durability goes, i.e. the stuff I can't tell just from playing for a few minutes in the store.

My old cheap guitar sounded great when I bought it, but it slowly began to crap out after that (buzzing frets, bad electronics, etc.), so I was mostly hoping to avoid something like that. Not too likely since I'm not really spending anything, but hey, it's worth a try...

[twatts]

Lots of words and stuff...

I dig your avatar...  I giggled for hours about that after the show that night...  Hilarious, Gordo's expression is priceless... 

Terry

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If anyone cares, I ended up buying a Fender CD140S and I'm quite happy with it so far. Thanks for the advice khalpin & bass-freq!