Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have read many glowing reviews about the Guild GAD models, including this OM model.
1. The good: Beautiful exterior finish, light weight, wonderful tone response, fast neck, solid woods. I ordered the mahogany back and sides, and it was just what I wanted. (I am favoring mahogany over rosewood for my next steel stringed acoustic guitar).
2. The unusual: wide string spacing. (Great for finderpicking)
3. The Bad: The high E string (first string, thinnest string) would come off the fret when I did pulls from the third fret while fretting the 1st fret. This is a common technique, and my playing style is full of such ornaments. I first experienced this while noodling. So I played a baroque piece with a lot of ornamentation, and discovered the location, and that it was a consistent error. I could learn to play without having the string fret out like this, but only by avoiding what caused it in the first place, in other words, by compromising the music. When a string pulls out like this, what happens is the string snaps back against the outside of the fret, making a tinkly noise instead of the tone that you expected. The reason this happened seems to be that the neck was made too narrow at the lower frets in error. Rather than scrap the guitar, or changing the string spacing at the nut, Guild Asia decided to just ship it and hope for an undiscerning customer.
A less serious issue, which has been pointed out by several other users, is that the bracing that is out of sight is roughly finished, while that which is visible near the sound hole is
finished smoothly.
Now for the bad part (for me): Because I purchased this from an Amazon affiliate with completion by Amazon, I was forced to pay the full return shipping costs, plus insurance. Bad deal for me. I could have corrected the problem, or had it fixed by a luthier, by changing the string spacing at the nut with a nut replacement. But that enters into the error of me fixing someone else's problem. I don't feel that that is the customer's role. Also, when I saw how the error occurred--the fingerboard seemed to be over rounded at the top edge, and was actually thinner than the neck--well, then I couldn't be happy with the instrument. There simply wasn't enough real estate for the 1st string because they chose to accommodate the 6th string. Someone at Guild GAD should have made the call to take a loss on the instruments with the flaw. Instead, they chose to sell them to unsuspecting customers. No more Guild anything for me. You can buy $300 guitars from major manufacturers all day long without this kind fo error. It is inexcusable. I will never purchase another guitar from or through Amazon, and no Guilds for me either. Never. And in the future I will make sure that I have some confidence in the seller by phone at least before purchasing an instrument online. I had formerly placed this confidence in Amazon, but that is over. In the future, I will be using Amazon less.
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