Guild F1512E Westerly 12-string

Guild's Westerly collection celebrates the company's 1967 move from their original Hoboken, New Jersey factory to the Rhode Island based factory in Westerly. After this move, the company flourished into the Guild we know today and this series is inspired by the success the move helped to generate.

The Westerly F-1512 is part of the higher end 150 range and combines two of Guild's specialities, Jumbo guitars and 12-strings for a large body instrument available with and without a built in Fishman pre-amp. Our F-1512E included the Fishman Sonitone pickup for a small upcharge verses the pickup-free F-1512 model.

Both F-1512's feature the same solid Indian rosewood back and sides, matched with a solid Sitka spruce top and scalloped x-bracing plus very attractive ivory ABS binding and purfling for a classic look. The back sports a lovely inlay while the top has a three-part rosette with mother-of -pearl, ivory ABS and black bands giving the guitar a subtle, classy look. The neck is mahogany with an Indian rosewood fretboard, small mother-of-pearl dots, 20 vintage sized frets and a bone nut leading up to a classic Guild headstock with 12 Die-cast closed gear tuners, six per side and the Chesterfield headstock logo, similar to that used on the wonderful 1960s Guilds. To complete the design, you get an Indian rosewood bridge and bone saddle with ivory coloured plastic pins, tortoiseshell effect pickguard and the guitar comes with an excellent, lightweight hard case.

The F-1512 is a definitely a superb looking and well-built guitar finished in a natural polyurethane gloss that really allows the beautiful rosewood back and sides to show off their lovely grain. The guitar features exceptional work internally and externally with excellent fretwork and set-up from the factory. The guitar arrived at our studio detuned for transportation and, whilst tuning any 12 string can be a long process, the tuners on the F-1512 made the process as pain free as possible and the guitar retained its tuning very well indeed, even despite our studio lights.

This model has a vintage inspired, C-shape neck profile with a very comfortable 48mm nut width and friendly string spacing that makes the guitar as similar as possible to a six-string with little adjustment required in terms of playing technique to accommodate the 12-string design. A 16'