Guild F-150 Jumbo Review

Great with or without amp

Very dynamic and clean through amp. The guitar sounds and looks beautiful, and the gig bag is deluxe.

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A detailed review of this magnificent guitar. . .

I got this guitar almost two years ago and it's become my main instrument. I'm a Tommy Emmanuel wannabe – lots of fingerstyle, but also jazz standards, bluegrass flatpicking, lots of shredding all over the neck, and general nuclear assault with a thumbpick. I hereby give this guitar 5/5 stars. Here are the reasons: (1) It's a jumbo cutaway with a 1 3/4" nut. The only one I could… read more find that wasn't boutique. That's more of a fingerstyle nut width – slightly easier to grip complex chords and do all the Travis picking stuff where you're using fretted and open notes together all over the neck. (2) The cutaway is awesome. You can comfortably play scales and arpeggios all the way up to a high C (the 20th fret). Thus, you can improvise over complete jazz/bluegrass standards exclusively above fret 15 (weird, but kind of neat to try) – the entire fingerboard is fully functional. I've owned a couple of other acoustics with cutaways and this Guild's deep, sweeping cutaway is by far the most completely accessible. (3) It's very loud when played acoustically. Much less injuring myself to be heard over mandolin and banjo. (4) The sound. I played an OMC Martin with a maple back and sides for about fifteen years before switching over to this thing (I'm kind of a monogamous guitarist) and the Guild has more boom, more warmth, more woodiness, and sparkle. Rosewood is a part of that, having (in my opinion) a natural complexity in tone that maple doesn't. But it's also just the overall design of this behemoth. (5) Again, the sound. The low E string smolders and makes my sternum rattle. Artificial harmonics glow and chirp. The high B and E strings slice through an ensemble when I'm shredding above the twelfth fret. The entire tonal range of this thing sounds great. (6) The price. My aforementioned Martin was more than 2k when bought new – now the same model goes for much more. For campfire jams, picnics in the park, the general dirtbag-iness of outdoor bluegrass, and playing jazz at coffee shops among cigarette smoke and bird dookie, I'm happy to have a less expensive guitar, and the Guild is louder and its sound fits my playing style better, anyway. (7) It's lovely. I don't care about this stuff that much, but if you do, the binding and finish work are all perfect. The rosewood is beautiful and the spruce top is very richly colored with a couple of adorable little natural freckles. (8) The pickup. Again, not a huge point for me, as 99% of the time I don't use it. But for a piezo it sounds warm and woody, rather than the nasal and wormy noise you get from cheap ones. The battery is easily accessible, and the pickup jack is sturdy. If you're a serious acoustic player, doing complex chord grips and fingerstyle stuff north of the tenth fret, playing scales and modes in sequences and all that good stuff, you will have to do some minor work to this when it arrives. It'll need a setup. My guitar's tuners needed to be oiled and tightened – they were scratchy sounding. The nut and saddle both needed to be shaved down. The 14th fret, second and third frets needed to have a tiny bit of work done (14 is always a problem fret, as it's where the neck and body join and 14 tends to get nudged up through the fingerboard as the instrument flexes over time). But that was it. I'm an extremely demanding player – mine has survived not only some really aggressive single line shredding and percussive fingerstyle, but also a heck of a lot of tinkering with the truss rod as the seasons change. It supports the unusually low "~2.2mm low E / ~2.0mm high E @ 12" action I like acoustic guitars set up with, it doesn't buzz, and the break angles over the nut and saddle are still fantastic. The overall workmanship and engineering are thus outstanding. Again, if you're doing more than playing cowboy chords – if your center of gravity is the seventh or so fret and you're grabbing big shapes with multiple alterations at lightning speed for chord melody acoustic playing, this sucker has playability, boom, and lovely intonation all the way up to the twentieth fret. You can spend a lot more on an acoustic for special woods, sound ports, abalone stuff, contoured joinery – to each their own! But for me, playability is #1 and sound #2, and this thing is powerful, playable, and sounds beautiful in every way I want a guitar to. One criticism. The gig bag that it comes with (and it's a bag, not a polyfoam case) seems inadequate for such a powerful instrument. It's fine for transporting the thing in your own car and strolling down to the park. But it's pretty flimsy for anything beyond that. I bought a hardshell case (item 0050530001 here on Sweetwater) with a built in humidifier. That's the one for this instrument – it's a coat of armor that comes with extra storage space, so you can carry extra strings, cables, and a handkerchief to wipe away your tears when the guitar sounds so beautiful it makes you weep. Jokes aside, from a hardcore lifetime acoustic player, ~1k seems to be a magical price point that's emerged over the last 15 years, and this is just one of the best instruments I've ever played. I own more expensive acoustics, but this is the only thing I want to play anymore.

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Great tone, easy to play

I bought the F150 because I wanted a big body sound. This guitar gives me that. It is quality workmanship, obviously well setup and it sounds just great. I enjoy playing it both plugged in and acoustically. Plugged in it is clean, clear and true to the tone of the guitar.

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