Yamaha LL16-12 ARE Solid Engelmann / Rosewood 12-String Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar w/ Pickup Natural

Twelve String Jangling Bliss

By: Peter Druery on 14 June 2025

This is simply the best 12 string I have come across in this price range. Very comfortable to play with great action for a 12 string. The build quality is just as good as the quality of tonal woods and materials used. Beautiful and manufactured really well to the specs. Tuning is very stable and reliable and the neck is built to take the extra tension of 12 strings. I love the shape, size and feel of the neck. Smooth satin finish and nicely finished fret edges rolled slightly (by hand I think). Sticking with the lighter tension strings for a little while before deciding if it needs to go up at all. So far different tunings (including some higher open tunings) work well. A joy to play so far and the string spacing is very similar to my Epihone Hummingbird (6 string). In fact it feels like cheating a bit when I get back on one of my six strings. So much room that it helps improve my playing by having to be that little bit more accurate with two strings per finger. Having said that this Yamaha is the easiest 12 string I’ve played in terms of fretboard comfort and finger room. The passive pick up is adequate and works well enough. I like that it is unabtrusive if using the guitar purely acoustically (and no need to worry about a battery or forgetting about it). Overall the tone is beautiful with excellent mid and high range. The bass is perhaps slightly flattened in response but, I think, slightly heavier gauge strings might help rebalance that. We’ll see. Overall it is a very nice contrast to my other guitars and extremely full and musical without that harsh jangle that some even much more expensive 12 strings can often have. Mellow and bright. Fingerpicking is just as delightful on this as full strumming. Supertramp fans, eat your heart out! This one will be a long term quality keeper with my guitarsenal.