The Yamaha APX600 (rolls right off the tongue) is a thinline acoustic guitar with a built-in pickup system that has three bands, including a sweepable midrange.  It sells for around $330 (as of February 2023) and it’s a killer value.  It’s wonderful for some situations and a bad choice for others.  So who is this guitar for?  Here’s the type of person this guitar was made for:

  • You want to spend around $300
  • You need something with a good sounding pickup system
  • You’re used to playing electric and want a skinny body and neck
  • You like a shorter scale length
  • You want something that looks good and is from a good brand
  • You’ll be gigging live with this and want an acoustic guitar that doesn’t feed back
  • You don’t care that it doesn’t sound great acoustically – it’s mostly for gigging
  • You want strap buttons that are already on the guitar
  • You want a built in tuner

That’s this guitar.  It sounds remarkable through a PA – much better sounding than I would have thought for the money.  Keep in mind that a good acoustic guitar pickup system might run you $200 alone.  If you are the above type of player, there are two or three options, and I think this one is the best.

Let’s do the thing.

The Good

On stage, you walk up to the mic with your Yamaha APX600 guitar.  You start playing and singing, and it sounds great.  The action is low and makes the guitar easy to play, the neck feels like an electric, and everyone assumes that your Yamaha guitar is expensive.  But you know it isn’t.  You got it for $330, and that’s a steal. The strap buttons are in a great location, the sweepable midrange EQ means you can fine tune your guitar to sound great on the fly, and the built in tuner is super handy.  Life is good!

The Bad

The tuner doesn’t mute your guitar, so you need to remember to turn down the volume when you tune.  You go to your friend’s house and he pulls out his acoustic and you play along, and you can’t hear what you’re playing, because this thing is NOT a great sounding acoustic guitar.  It makes sound, yes, but it sounds trebly and there’s very little body.  Don’t buy this guitar unless the plan is to play it plugged in.  It’s fine for casual playing around the house, but it’s not loud enough or full enough to compete with a $200 full body guitar.

The Ugly

Here’s the dirty little secret – this guitar ships with high action.  It’s supposed to be easy to play, out of the box, and it isn’t.  You need to remove and sand down the plastic bridge saddle in order to get the strings at a reasonably low height.  If only Yamaha had done that at the factory… but they didn’t.  Yes, you can play it out of the box, but you want lower action.  And if you sand down too far, you ruin the bridge saddle and you need to buy a new one.  Also, the frets are scratchy and need to be polished, the fret ends could use a little more work, and you might find some small cosmetic issues.  Oh, and the nut is plastic.  It’s a lot of guitar for $330, so you shouldn’t be surprised by these things.

Conclusion

I’m working on a video for the YouTube channel, but basically you might want to sand down the bridge saddle, polish the frets, and put new strings on it.  And then you’ll have a killer guitar for the money.  I can’t wait to gig with this thing.  Will I ever replace the nut and saddle?  I don’t know.  It sounds really good as it is through my PA.  I’ll probably just leave it alone.  Depends how bored I get.

 

Update, 3/6/23:  Here is the part one video, where I unbox the thing and talk about it.