Seagull Excursion Natural SG Guitar Expert Review (Updated 2023)

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Hello and welcome to my Seagull Excursion Natural SG guitar review.

This review will look at Seagull’s Excursion in terms of:

The Tone;
The Playability;
The Materials the Excursion is made from;
Who the Excursion is best suited to;
The Excursion’s value-for-money

I’ll also provide video of the Excursion in action so that you can get an appreciation of the tone for yourself and some user reviews so you can read about other people’s opinions.

Guitar Tone
Guitar Materials
- Electronics
- Videos
Guitar Playability
Other Excursion Versions
Who this Guitar is Most Suited to
Value for Money
More Info and Where to Buy

Guitar Tone

The excursion has a solid but unspectacular tone. it’s balanced but not amazingly rich/full. But certainly a nice tone for the price.

it’s quite a crisp tone – brighter than it is warm – I’d say a 7/10 – with 10 being the brightest possible and 1 being the warmest. it’s strongest in the trebles and somewhat in the mids but the bass is lacking a bit.

There is some bass coming through and you get a bit of that dreadnought boominess (is that a word!?) but it’s mostly a high/mid heavy sound to my ear.

Guitar Materials

Top: Laminated Canadian Wild Cherry
Back & Sides: Laminated Canadian Wild Cherry
Bridge: Rosewood
Saddle: Compensated Tusq (by Graptech) Saddle
Nut: Tusq

No real surprise to see a laminate top – there aren’t many guitars in this price range with a solid top.

I’m not a big fan of the look of the wood myself (I prefer a darker grain) but looks/color doesn’t normally come into my assessment of a guitar – and it’s all subjective of course, so you might actually really like the color.

It is however nice to see that the saddle and nut aren’t just cheap plastic. Tusq is a great material for nuts and saddles and is made to sound like ivory.

Electronics

You can get it in a straight acoustic version or an electric-acoustic. The electric-acoustic version has Fishman Isys electronics with built in tuner.

Videos

The video below will give you some idea of the sound for yourself. It also talks about the specs of the guitar. If you only want to hear the sound there is some playing right at the start and then more of the guitar being played at 3:40 into the video.

Guitar Playability

I found the guitar ok to play but my hands started to fatigue after a while due to a higher action than I am used to.

For it to be easy to play for a beginner the action would need to be lowered in my opinion.

Action

My usual complaint with acoustic guitars – particularly in this price range is action. And the Excursion, in my opinion, is set up too high.

Of course some people prefer this higher type of action so if this is you then you wouldn’t need to adjust it. But if you’re like me and prefer a low action then you would want to get this adjusted. it’s not that costly to get it done (usually between $20 and $70) or you can learn to do it yourself.

Nut Width

The nut width is 1.72″ (43.69mm) so it’s fairly standard – maybe slightly slimmer than standard but not much.

Felt fine to play and I didn’t notice it being wider or slimmer than normal.

Fretboard (Fingerboard)

The fingerboard is made from rosewood which is great.

Scale Length

The Excursion SG Natural is a full size dreadnought with a scale length of 24.84″ (631mm). Acoustic guitars usually have a scale length of 24″ to 25.5″ – so the Excursion SG is in the middle of that range and probably slightly shorter than your average dreadnought.

This slightly shorter scale length means that the frets are slightly closer together. This gives the advantage of not having to stretch quite as much between frets but can also make it more difficult to play in the higher frets if you have bigger fingers – however it’s not a really short scale length and I didn’t have any troubles fitting into the higher fret range.

Other Excursion Versions

The Excursion comes in the following versions

Excursion Natural SG (this review) – dreadnought
Excursion Natural Folk SG – grand auditorium type shape
Excursion Natural Grand SG – parlor size
Excursion Walnut SG – solid spruce top with laminated walnut back & sides (dreadnought)
Excursion Walnut Mini Jumbo SG – like the walnut SG but in a jumbo shape (but not as big as a jumbo)
Excursion Walnut 12 SG – 12 string version of the walnut SG

All models come with the option of electronics and built in tuner.

Who this Guitar is Most Suited to

This guitar is best suited to anyone looking for a balanced, even sounding well-built guitar for a reasonable price.

It would also make a great second guitar if you wanted to have something else to jam with or if you were looking to keep a guitar at your holiday home or somewhere else that you want to have a guitar and not pay that much.

It would actually be a pretty good guitar for beginners but you would definitely want to get the action lowered to make it physically and technically easier to play.

For kids or people with smaller hands then the Excursion Folk SG or Parlor SG would be the better options.

Value for Money

I think you kind of get what you pay for tone-wise with the Excursion. Seagull have some very nice guitars and the excursion is pretty good for its price but it won’t blow you away. There are some really nice sounding seagulls, like the Seagull Coastline S6, for not that much more, in my opinion.

You definitely get your money’s worth but I wouldn’t pay more than what it’s price is currently at. The price is set just right, in my opinion.

More Info and Where to Buy

Thanks for reading and I hope this review has helped you to learn more about Se agull‘s Excursion SG acoustic guitar.

If you’ve played this guitar and have an opinion about this guitar or if you have any questions or any other comments please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section below.

Check out my blog post on More Under 300 Acoustic Guitar Reviews.

Seagull Excursion Natural SG: Acoustics Under $300 Reviews

Table of Contents

Guitar Tone