I've recently went guitar shopping with a friend who wanted an acoustic for about $500 too.
We went to music theme, where I let her try the $1200 Martin first, to give her an idea of what some of the good tones sound like. Music theme was nice enough to let us try some stuff without buying.
They also have seagulls and A&L guitars which are built by godin. Unfortunately we didn't find any we liked around our range.
Then we headed to Bras Pasah (Maestro was closed, it was a saturday or sunday I think. Luther also.) We tried out a couple in Ranking and Swee Lee. Swee Lee had a couple of nice ones at the back, but she said she would prefer one that could be plugged in.
So we headed to Yamaha Tampines, where I had already scouted out 2 nice ones, one for $480 and one for $520.
She tried both of them and they both were nice. One was drier and more twangy, the other was wetter and warmer. So I talke to the guy and we went into the room with the amps for some quiet. I asked her to play and sing, so we could hear how the guitar's tone worked with her voice. When we did this it was obvious that one of them took to her voice much better than the other, and she bought it.
This thread is fairly old and the original poster hasn't posted in a bit, but I just thought i'd say, the Yamahas are really not too bad. Bestest best way of shopping is still, go everywhere, try everything.
