I've been taking lessons for almost 2 years now with an old friend's Yamaha acoustic...all this talk about pickup position (which I understand in everything but practice) is seriously making me jealous...I can almost play and sing (I never knew the latter would be so hard)  a couple of tunes and my son and I spend at least an hour or so clobbering tunes every week.  On a selfish note - it's nice to 'hear' this conversation here.