There isn't a lot to tell about our New Year's pick, other than she's a budget-priced, Korean-made, nylon-strung electro-classical guitar with a transducer pickup underneath the bridge saddle, and with a battery-operated four-band EQ pre-amp on board. The neck measures 50mm wide at the nut, classical dimensions, but is quite shallow, enabling girlie electric players such as myself to get around on it.

Never having learned to play the guitar "properly", I was in no hurry to seek out a classical guitar, but eventually decided there was room in my arsenal for something that sounded similar, that I could play and record easily.

I've railed against acoustic transducers before in these pages, and again this one is true to type. It sounded fine when it was new, through my Award-Session GG10 pre-amp, but after a few years of comparatively little use, it began fizzing and distorting to the point where it's now practically useless.

As the GG10 has also broken, I'm reduced to placing a mic in front of it if I need to record! Its acoustic properties are, not surprisingly, fairly limited and its performance less than impressive, but it's a nice little guitar to fool around on.

You gets what you pays for

Happy New Year!