Well, I plucked up the courage and ordered one without playing it first. I've tried a number of small acoustics recently, and none of them really hit the spot. I mostly strum with a little flat picking, so I was looking for something that would fill that role. It seems most small guitars are designed for finger-picking, and I certainly tried a few that sounded awful when strummed. I wanted a small strummer with a short scale neck, because I'm a small man with short scale arms... I also wanted it to sound a bit bluesy, the AP70 was reported to be a bit happy sounding for the blues.
So I took a deep breath and ordered the AP66, and it's just about perfect. Compared to my Tanglewood TW15 dread it holds it's own surprisingly well. A little less bassy/boomy, but not much, and a little less loud, but not much either. I'm quite amazed by it, considering the different top woods and different sizes, it sounds remarkably similar. Perhaps the highs are little more 'rounded'? Whatever, I like it.
I've found the 45mm nut ok as well, as opposed to 43mm, in fact, with the short scale and slightly wider nut, it's not unlike putting a capo on the second fret of the TW15. Neck wise, it is slightly thicker than I'm used to, but not absurdly so. It's still pretty easy to use capo on 5 or even 7 for example.
Any issues? I'm not sure if my nut spacing is normal.. The low (thick) E is a bit closer to the edge than the high (thin) E. Almost on the rounded bit of the frets. Something like that is mentioned in the AP70 review in Acoustic Guitar (
http://www.acousticguitar.com/Gear/R...ez-AP70-Review), but it's a bit ambiguous as to which E they're referring to (I assumed before I got it that it would be the other way around). Is this normal, other AP66/AP70 owners? I might have to get a new nut done if I can't get used to it. The Nut is also a bit high as it comes, I'm used to about 1mm and this is about 2mm (but I mustn't forget that I had the action lowered on the TW15, so I'll just have to get it done on the AP66 too). I also found I got fret buzz playing G on the low E string when I started trying it out, and it bugged me until I realised that I was hitting the strings harder than I normally would when playing. When I forgot about the buzzing and just played it normally, the buzzing went away!
I'm undecided on the pick guard, some people were thinking of removing it earlier in the thread, did you remove it? If you did could you post a picture please?
Here's a pic of mine with the TW15 on the left and a 3/4 classical on the right:
I've had it a couple of weeks now (I starting writing this in a text file when I got it), and played with a group on sat. All good as far as I can tell, and kept up well enough with a bunch of other (larger) acoustics! I had to use my dread's case as I haven't bought a fitted one yet, and my dread has been out on a stand since then, seems awfully big now, having got used to the 00 size, I may never go back.