-
You say you “have a line” on an FG700S and that you have no way to compare it to your FG150, since the FG700S has been discontinued. From these statements, I infer that you can get a specific FG700S at an attractive price from someone distant from you, such that you can’t try before you buy. I further assume it is in used condition (not likely to be any “new old stock” remaining), so the usual caveat apply to buying from a distant source. If it looks like a favorable seller and you’re confident about the guitar being jn reasonable condition, I say jump on it. Unless there’s a major flaw, you’re not likely to go wrong with a Yamaha. They tend to deliver a lot of value, and I don’t think the FG700S was very expensive. You will therefore not be putting much at risk. You’ll really appreciate having it at the end of this month when the banjo challenge rolls around. My recollection is that the banjo week lessons require open G tuning, and I find that I really appreciate having a second guitar when I want to explore alternate tunings. I don’t mind taking my primary guitar back and forth between standard and Drop D, since it only involves one string, but I don’t like fooling around with three or four tuning machines a couple times a day.
As others have pointed out, you’ll also appreciate it having a somewhat different voice owing to the larger body size.
If you buy it and for some reason you don’t enjoy it, you can probably re-sell and recoup most of what you paid for it or perhaps it would appeal to you to donate it to Guitars for Vets or some other good cause. When I went to ALF 2018, I bought a used Yamaha from Music Villa, then drove it over to TAC HQ on Monday morning and left it with Noah as a G4V donation. I owned that guitar for only about 4-5 days! Don’t get me wrong – I loved the guitar. It was my intent to donate it all along.