So here’s the thing - Mr. Zager has found a set up that works well for him. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to work well for you, nor for anyone else whose hands and playing style aren’t a lot like Mr. Zager’s.
I remember going into a guitar shop in Cornwall, ON, where the proprietor was also the guitar tech, and every instrument was set to his specifications, as I found out when I went to play some of his steel strings. “Do you have anything with the action and frets a little higher, and strung a little tighter?” I asked. I got an earful about how his guitars were all perfectly set up to his ideal, and that I needed to change how I was playing. Yet one more reason that I hate Cornwall, ON.
At any rate - I highly recommend going in person to a guitar shop with a guitar-playing friend. (The guitar teacher who was giving the lessons - is he or she still on the scene? A real, live, in person teacher is a really good idea - I cannot express this opinion strongly enough. Why, yes, I do teach guitar, and a huge part of that teaching is correcting the thoroughly ingrained bad habits acquired by the self-taught, or book-taught, or web-lesson taught.) Go through a number of instruments; the friend plays the same three short pieces on each of them. You will walk in there thinking you won’t be able to hear the difference. You will walk out of there being amazed at the difference between instruments in the same price range, sometimes even from the same maker. Have the friend help you finger something really basic so that you can feel how the guitar fits your own hand. D Major and e minor chords, perhaps.
Your first guitar may not be the guitar you grow into - just accept that. It’s a good idea to get an instrument that is good enough to be adjustable. In my experience, it’s not impossible to find a worthwhile instrument in the $100. - $200 range, it’s just that it’s so unlikely as to be a large waste of time. By the time you hit the $400. range, you’re much more likely to be able to find something worthwhile.
Get the best guitar you can afford.
Steel-string acoustics are the hardest on your fingers for starting out. In string tension, there’s an inverse relation between volume and ease of play - the higher the tension on the string, the more sound it can project, but the harder it is to press the string to the fingerboard. Too loose, and the sound quality drops off. Steel string acoustics sound better with a higher string tension than an electric.
Nylon string classical guitars have a different idea behind their construction - they are built to project single notes well. The soundboard gets overwhelmed with a lot of rapid strumming of all six strings. The nylon strings are far easier on your fingers, but the guitar may not respond well to your style of playing. That being said, this is your first guitar - maybe it would work well for you to learn on a classical for a year and then trade it in for your intermediate player guitar. Just a thought worth considering…
Electric guitars have a couple of handy things for the students - they don’t have to be strung with high tension strings to produce good sound, and you can practice silently at all hours of the day or night. Most amps produced in the last 10 years have a headphone jack that cuts the speaker out of the circuit, so you can play with a natural sound but no one else has to hear it. Good for woodshedding.
So, even sticking with a steel-stringed acoustic, what should you be looking at? Neck width and neck profile are going to be important, esp. for someone with smaller fingers. Scale length, the distance between the nut and the saddle of the bridge, is very important also. You want to be able to reach from 1st fret to 4th fret comfortably. You and your guitar friend with you in the shop need to be your own best judges - is that a stretch that will develop or is the scale length just too long for you. I like a 640 mm neck. I can play a 650, and a 660 is no fun at all. Some classicals come in 665 - I’ve never played one, but I can’t imagine I’d like it.
About your fingers - ‘bumping adjacent strings’ has many causes. Possible causes include the neck is too narrow for you - however, check that all your fingers are truly perpendicular (in both planes) and the string is centred under your finger. How’s the curve of your fingers - are any of the joints flattened out or bent the other way? Are you directly to the left of the fret, assuming you’re a right-handed player? And most important, are your fingers calloused yet? Calloused fingertips don’t spread as much against the fretboard. Are you holding the neck of the guitar like your niece’s hand as you cross the street, or like something foul you found on the floor, or like the neck of someone who owes you a thousand dollars? Hint - go for the niece’s hand.
Do you want to wrap your thumb or not? The profile of the neck can help or hinder whether you can get your thumb around to the 6th string or not…
I’ve got to leave it there for now… good luck with it all and have fun!
