Best acoustical guitar - any type music

"The Guitar Trio" mentioned above, by Glen, is great.

Pepe Romero doing Rodrigo's "Concerto de Aranjuez" is one of my favorites. Classical guitar and full orchestra. It will move you to tears. I sat is the first row and saw Elliot Fisk perform it. I will never forget that concert.

Sharon Isbin, with Laurindo Almeida (and a third guitarist I can't remember, maybe Larry Coryell) have a beautiful recording of "West Side Story" and throw in an incredible version of "Rhapsody In Blue".

There is a cd by an Italian guitarist named Pepino Dagostino, that reminds me of Michael Hedges. It is worth owning for his version of the classic "Walk Away Rene", sung by David Wilcox. It is the only vocal on the cd. Beautiful!

Anything by Christopher Parkening, Andres Segovia or Julian Bream, as already mentioned.

These guys are steel guitar pickers.

Watson and late son Merle did a great live album on vinyl for Vanguard.

Both Watson and Rice recorded with David Grisman ( " Dawg ", the mandolin player ) and you can get hear some of their work on CDs from Grisman's acousticsounds.com. HDCD too.

Darn, you beat me to it. "Doc and Merle Watson's Guitar Album"

Also - Christopher Parkening's "Tribute to Segovia" - "Liona Boyd Live in Tokyo" - and "Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters," a compilation cd on Dancing Cat Records.

If you can find anything by Merle Travis, after whom Doc named his son, that would be good too for the perfomances but probably not the greatest sonically.

Redkiwi mentioned Joe Pass -- not sure how the hell I forgot to mention him. A clear sign the brain cells are dying at an increasingly rapid rate!! If you buy only recording by Joe Pass, it should be "Virtuoso", a solo recording. It has recently been re-issued on CD as a 20-bit remaster, and the audio quality is very, very good.

I just had a listen to "Virtuoso" again (first time in maybe 18 months) - steel string guitar (as opposed to nylon in "I Remember Charlie Parker"), and "Vituoso" is more spectacular playing - breathtaking really. I like both but "Virtuoso" is the tour de force as you say SD.