I personally would recommend the Taylor or the Larrive. Martins can be totally awesome but for your price range you probably would get more out of the the other models. Martin's high high end instruments are top notch.
I would not rule out Gibson (i'm bias as I play gibson's pretty much exclusively electric and acoustic).
Every Taylor I have played was a bit of a more difficult axe to play, however the sound could not be beat. It rang through, the wood was excellent just sounded mint.
The Larrive's I've played (several, almost bought one actually) was a great guitar. A bit of a smaller body so the tone wasn't as big as the Taylors but she sounded great still and played a little easier.
Martins always are to me at least the best of both worlds but you have to really spend big bucks to get the best there. I haven't felt or heard a big difference between a 3000 Taylor and a 1500 taylor yet. I think I'll have to do more experiementing.
I won't rant about Gibsons, I could be here all day.
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