Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were really very few solo acoustic guitar players on the scene.You had:Leo Kottke, Adrian legg, Chet Atkins, Stephan Grossman, Davey Graham and literally only a handful of others.Each of them, whilst heavily influenced from their predecessors (guys like Merle Travis and John Fahey) had their own unique style of guitar playing.Then came the 80s and along with it, the great Michael Hedges.Just as Eddie Van Halen spawned a multitude of 3rd rate, self-obsessed, showoff electric guitar noodlers, what followed Hedges was (still is) a plethora of fairly average "Contemporary" acoustic guitar players.That's not to say there haven't been some great ones (Don Ross and Preston Reed spring to mind) as well but they are definitely in the minority.The solo acoustic guitar scene in 2008 now mainly consists of players that fall into one of 4 categories:1)Those that sound like Hedges2)Those that sound like Preston Reed3)Those that sound like Don Ross4)those that sound like Tommy Emmanuel.All over Youtube are guitarist that fall into one of those categories.I wouldn't dream of writing out a list of sound-a-like musos and I'd be the first to admit that when developing your "style and sound" studying your favorite players is an absolute necessity but eventually, you have to come to a point where you say to yourself "time to go my own way".Preston Reed never copied Michael Hedges. he took the rough technical ideas and took it in a diferent direction.The same can be said for Don Ross, Amrit Sond or Brian Gore.I think the reason so many players (perhaps subconsciously) refuse to take that step is that it's significantly easier to please your audience with these some times song-destroying techniques than actually playing something simple with a good melody regardless of how it "looks":To close I'd like to say that I love Hedges, Ross, Reed and Emmanuel more than anyone. They're continually changing the way the acoustic guitar is thought of and that's wonderful.Likewise so are Amrit Sond, Jon Gomm, Peppino D'Agostino, Adrian Legg,Petteri Sariola and Mark Wilson.The fact that there are sooooo many more acoustic guitar players springing up because of them is no bad thing by any means. The bar has been raised so high that it's bloody hard to jump past it... but that's no reason not to try.