*NEW* YAMAHA APX-3 Acoustic Electric Guitar APX3

Features of the Yamaha APX3

Tuners - Unbranded mini-tuners with large kidney-shaped knobs brought the guitar smoothly into tune.

Headstock - Small tapered paddle shape with screen printed Yamaha logo. 

Nut - The tidy white plastic nut abuts the rosewood of the fretboard.

Neck - For an acoustic guitar this is a lovely slim neck with a parallel profile. Very suitable for players with smaller hands. The neck is made from nato wood which has a close and even, if rather uninspiring grain pattern.

Fretboard - Dark rosewood board with a tight, even grain. The neck joins the body at the 14th fret. The pearloid dot fret markers feature a double dot at the 7th as well as the 12th fret.

Frets - Medium-small rounded frets that are nicely finished at the ends.

Action - Medium-low action from the box. I was able to use a full bar chord at the 12th despite the strings fitted being of a heavier gauge than I would choose for myself.

Body - The smallish single-cut body is very comfortable to hold and play despite a slight feeling of neck-heaviness. The back and sides are nato and the top is spruce. These woods do not have highly figured grain, so the APX3 looks rather unassuming under its Tobacco Sunburst finish with the delicate binding adding a nice sense of definition.
The sound-hole is elliptical and has a rosette made from patterned plastic which is glued to the soundboard. The upper edge of the body houses the control panel and the battery compartment. 

Bridge - The rosewood bridge holds a simple slanted plastic saddle and the strings are secured with traditional bridge-pins.

Pickups - A piezo pickup is mounted under the bridge.

Controls - The control panel has a master volume knob and three bands of eq on sliders. The clever bit is the AMF slider (Adjustable Midrange Frequency) which is used to set the frequency that is altered by the mid-range slider.  

Strap-buttons - Smallish plastic strap buttons are located on the bottom of the body and at the back of the heel.

Output Jack - On the bottom of the body, slightly offset from the strap button.

Finish - For a guitar built in Taiwan the finish is very pleasing. I could find no faults.

Sound of the Yamaha APX3 Electro-Acoustic Guitar

A good acoustic sound is not necessarily what electro-acoustics are built to produce. Having said that, I immediately liked the un-amplified voice of the Yamaha. There's a satisfying bass response that graduates beautifully into a silky and authoritative mid-range. I had expected a weaker voice from what is quite a small sound-box. 
Lacking a dedicated acoustic amp, I ran the APX3 through a very clean valve amp. The mark of a good electro-acoustic is the level of tonal flexibility that can be squeezed out of its controls. And this is where the AMF system scores a huge amount of points. To discover the range available from the system I boosted the mid-range slider and moved the AMF slider back and forth across its whole sweep. The effect was not unlike a wah-wah, such is the wide scope of frequencies on which you can focus the midrange parameters.
The mid-range, which is the strength of the un-amplified voice, then becomes the tool with which you sculpt your overall amplified sound, cutting or boosting the chosen wedge of mids in conjunction with the conventional fixed-range high and low sliders.