Guild A-150 Savoy - Has any one had a chance to try one yet?

[staush]

I was surprised to discover recently that Guild is reintroducing many of their electric models from yesteryear--at very reasonable prices. I'm referring to the Newark St. Collection (see www.guildguitars.com)

I have never owned a Guild of any kind, and used to own a Gibson ES175. Today, however, the prices of new and used Gibsons are formidable, to say the least.

I am particularly interested in the A150 Savoy, a replcation of Guild's old X150, which I understand was marketed as Guild's response to the ES175. Today's version has a floating DeArmond pickup.

There is very little on you tube since these models are just coming out. Has anyone had a chance to play or see one? What do you think?

Thanks in advance!

[rpguitar]

It looks really cool, except for the 1.65" nut width. Still I'll bet it sounds really good with that solid (pressed) spruce top. Somebody really needs to lobby them to make the DeArmond pickups available separately!

[Doctor Jeff]

The A150 with the DeArmond is SUPER COOL--I'll take a blonde, please. And the price is right, especially compared to Gibson.

Does anyone know where it's made?

I have been GASing for an Ibanez GB10, which on the used market is about the same as the new A150. Now I may have to find a Guild to try in person.

[kamlapati]

Just FYI, the "A" prefix in Guild's old nomenclature indicates an acoustic guitar, differentiating it from the "X" prefix. I know that most of the old "A" guitars had carved spruce tops (I owned an A-350 and A-500), but don't know for sure about the A-150. The X series had ply maple tops, and those were Guilds answer to the ES-175.

I've heard that the modern A-150 will come in multiple varieties, a Korean made ply top, and an expensive US made carved top. I can't wait to play them too.

[staush]

The Newark Street Collection is being made in New Hartford, Connecticut--about 1 hour from my house. Now that's a tease!

I believe the A in A150 Savoy still stands for acoustic (sunburst finish standard).

An AB150 would be blonde finish--the B standing for blonde. There is no difference in price. They list for $1649, and are being sold for $1149. That's about what you would pay for a new Fender Amercian Standard Telecaster.

[customxke]

The Newark Street Collection is being made in New Hartford, Connecticut--about 1 hour from my house. Now that's a tease!

I believe the A in A150 Savoy still stands for acoustic (sunburst finish standard).

An AB150 would be blonde finish--the B standing for blonde. There is no difference in price. They list for $1649, and are being sold for $1149. That's about what you would pay for a new Fender Amercian Standard Telecaster.

The Patriarchs are made in New Hartford. The Newark Street Collection is made in Korea.

[Monjo Hakashi]

I'm in the UK. Looking at buying either the Peerless Monarch or the Guild A 150. The Guild is about £100 cheaper, and except for the binding on the F holes, and two more frets on the Peerless I can't see much of an advantage. The Guild in fact has a couple of advantages for me, slightly narrower at the nut, and slightly longer in the scale length. I may end up buying both.

[fritz jones]

The guild a 150 is nice, the specs say solid (pressed?) top.
I tried one last weekend. It was really easy to play, the factory setup and fretwork was excellent.
The guitar had a thick finish, like a lot of Asian made stuff.
The pickup seemed really nice.
I have no idea about the acoustic sound however, I only played into an amp.

It's 24.75 scale or thereabouts, pretty thin neck. I think the lower bout dimension is 16.5 or 16.75, so a bit less bulky than L5 type guitars.

[Monjo Hakashi]

The acoustic properties are important to me. I like it to have at least a small voice un-amplified. You had the amp wound up so far that you couldn't hear the guitar at all?

[mbegin@primus.ca]

The A-150 is made in Korea where as their historic collection is made in Newark and prices begin at around $10,000.00.
The A-150 does have a solid spruce top as it should for $1149.00 which seems to be the going price. Have I played one, yes I have and to great delight. Beautiful smokey tone with that hollow attack at the front end of the note, even with a pick the notes didn't seem to harsh. The DeArmond pickup is a dead on copy in every aspect except for the mounting bar which originally would continue back to the bridge and yes I must agree with the other post in that Guild should make this pickup available on its own. It also seems that many stores choose to keep the foam pad under the bridge for protection and I had to persuade the clerk to remove it so I could hear its true tone....don't even bother trying it with the foam in. Beautiful guitar for the price I just wish guitar manufacturers would move back to nitro finish all the time and lose the urethane.

[mbegin@primus.ca]

Short scale 24" 3/4 which I believe is the reason so many "jazz" guitarist do not play fenders although a telecaster on the neck pickup is a great jazz tone to my ears. Amazing what a difference 3/4 of an inch does for some of those big chords. The radius is quite round....9.5 I believe. The neck on the one I tried was like a piece of marble very very solid and had no give. Do the Koreans hand carve and tone tap the tops of these guitars, probably not but there is no comparison between ply and real wood on a top and this is really the major selling point for me on this guitar. Obviously all this info is available at their website and there's a great video of the savoy being played that really display's it's hollow tone, of course it is being played through an old princeton.

[Monjo Hakashi]

I've bought two guitars in three weeks, the first a Peerless Monarch from Guitar Village, and then a Guild Newark St. A150 Savoy from Project Music. I've found the comparison very interesting. The Peerless they'd had in stock for months, and they were also selling it on Ebay. I'll save their blushes by not revealing the rebate I negociated, but in fact the guitars were a very similar price, and both delivered free. The guitars look superficially similar, cut away, floating bridge, floating pickup and tailpiece, but here the similarity ends.

The Peerless is far better appointed, as it should be for the additional approx. £100. Bound headstock, fancy tuning buttons, abalone position blocks, and the curious 'wrap around' hardwood tailpiece. (The guitar, at least in looks is obviously inimitative of some D'Angelico guitars) It plays very well, although I had to lose the heavy flat-wound strings, but they may well suit other players.

The Savoy on the other hand seems almost spartan, except for the stylish DeArmond pickup. (Slid free of the bar on mine, during transit, but thankfully no damage done) There is no binding on the headstock, and the position blocks are a boring pearloid of the type you find on many Korean made guitars. But where the Guild really is different is in the unplugged sound. Astonishingly, as the bodies are almost of exactly the same external volume, the Guild is very nearly twice as loud...

Now of course these guitars are not the dance band behemoths of the days of yore, when the guitar was supposed to be acoustic, and the pick-up was an afterthought. The Peerless is to all effects a semi, it's not so loud as a decent parlour guitar, whereas, if you had no acoustic handy, you might unplug the Guild, and carry on jamming in the sunshine of the yard outside. True, it couldn't compete with the volume produced by a fairly ordinary flat-top, but you would be able to hear yourself play.

The Peerless is made, top back and sides, without laminated woods. Only the top of the Guild is solid wood, sides and back being laminated, this makes it even more surprising that the Guild should be so much louder.

Two very different guitars, with not a great differential in the price, but a lot of difference in style. Perhaps neither of these are anywhere near the quality of American guitars (costing four or five times the price) but they've got accurate fretting and good pick-ups, you'd be a good man to tell the difference at 30 yards distance when they were both played through a Blues Junior. I'd recommend both, but if I could only have one, then it would most probably be the Guild.

I'd rather hear a good guitar-player on a cheap instrument than an absolutely hopeless guitar-player using the most expensive guitar in the world.

[Monjo Hakashi]

Nitro is certainly better for the acoustic, but it's more expensive and shows every little ding.

[allanploth]

Guild A150 Savoy archtop guitar, first impressions.

I have been playing my new Guild jazz box for three days now, and I appreciate it more and more for the lovely instrument it is. Out of the box, it looked nice and pretty in its blonde finish (I prefer blondes when it comes to guitars), though it shipped with round wound strings set quite high. No big deal, par for the course. I strung up a set of D'Addario Chromes 12-52 flat wounds, brought the bridge down a bit, and got busy with it.

This guitar has a very delicate nature. The neck is slim, and the pickup has none of the density of a set-in-the-body humbucker. Acoustically, the guitar is surprisingly loud, but by no means heavy-sounding. The combination of solid (pressed, I assume) spruce top and laminated back and sides seems to be a winning combination in this case. (It reminds me of old Ovation flat-top acoustic guitars from the 70s: nice tone and loud as hell, though the Guild is a more refined instrument than the aforementioned.) It's plenty loud enough to practice un-amplified, and it has a great deal of sonic detail and subtlety in its acoustical projection.

To my ears, it has less lower midrange/high bass presence than one might expect from a typical archtop. It has a nice upper-upper midrange "bite" to its articulation, with far less high end (of course) than a flat-top acoustic guitar, and a soft-but-present low end.

Amplified, it's more of the same. The DeArmond floating pickup (fairly and reasonably quiet for a single-coil) is consistent with the guitar's given sound: light, clear, much more like the sound of a small-diaphragm microphone than of a guitar pickup. The end result is an amplified acoustic guitar, not an electric guitar with an "acoustic" sound.

To clarify: to my ears, an ES175 (the sound of which I love) is definitely an electric guitar. This Guild is definitely an acoustic guitar.

By the way, the fit and finish of this guitar are absolutely first rate. Fretwork is great, nut height for each string just the tiniest bit up, neck straight as can be. The surface of the entire instrument is immaculate.

I have made two minor changes to the guitar's electronics:

1) a treble bleed for the volume knob, which keeps the sound from getting dark when turning down the volume; and

2) a thumbwheel tone knob mounted under the pickguard, which is not adequate. Being a linear taper pot, it has the wrong range for this application. I have since ordered a 250k, audio taper replacement which I hope will better suit its purpose.

I'm not altogether thrilled with the sound of this guitar through my recently-acquired Ibanez Wholetone amp. But I blame neither. I think it's just not a match made in jazz guitar heaven. This guitar needs a tube combo, I'm thinking with a fairly stiff 15" speaker, to sound right. The Wholetone is a great amp, though, I've decided, and I'm definitely keeping it.

A quick question for anyone who has read this far and not fallen asleep:

Without betraying the nice, natural sound of the Guild A150 Savoy, I wouldn't mind a slightly thicker tone. I used to play an Epiphone Emperor Regent, which I fitted with a Kent Armstrong hand-wound humbucker (absolutely friggin' gorgeous-sounding pickup, I mean seriously, by the way), and it sounded pretty darned good with 13-gauge strings. Can anybody recommend another brand that might give me a thicker tone?

So anyways, there you have it. If anybody reading this was thinking of pulling the trigger on this guitar, I can't talk you out of it. It's not your average, everyday workhorse guitar by any means, and it may not be the right instrument for you; but wow, what a nice guitar the Guild A150 Savoy is.

[vinlander]

Interesting review, is that a carved top or a laminated ?
In the description it says "solid top"; it has X braces which I guess is closer to that Johnny Smith construction than the Epi Regent with its parallel bracing.
In my case the regent always sounded too "thin" and flat top like for my taste; even with 13-56 flats and trying some different floaters like Korean KA and Bartolini 5J.
I ended up routing a classic 57 into the top to get that darker and fatter tone I was after...

[allanploth]

The top is, as I stated, solid, which, if not outright said to be carved, then most likely pressed into an arched shape.

My Epiphone Emperor Regent exploded (in a good way) when I installed the KA hand wound pickup. It sounded simply glorious. I hate myself for having sold it.

[ruger9]

I was always "set" on getting the Emperor as an "affordable" archtop... one that could be played ACOUSTICALLY as well as plugged in. But this was before the "new order" came in: D'Angelico EXL-1, Godin Jazz, Guild A-150.... I really wish I could play all these side-by-side, but it would be near impossible finding a dealer that stocked them all.

So I'm going to have to go on internet reviews and youtube clips... and hold my breath, and take the plunge.

Yours is the 2nd first-hand review I have read that says the Guild is a good player/good buy.

As for the tone: I found a couple different YT vids of the Guild, one with a darker tone and one with a very clear and brighter tone.... so it seems the guitar could do either, and perhaps it's the amplification (or at least the pairing of it with the guild) that is the problem?

[allanploth]

ruger9,

The clear and brighter tone is closer to the guitar's acoustic, unamplified sound. But I'm getting a pretty wide range of sounds through various amps with different settings.

But it's a fairly light and delicate guitar with a single coil pickup. I am beginning to really enjoy its sound, but it's NOTHING like a guitar with a humbucker in the body.

[allanploth]

Further observations:

I replaced the 500k, linear taper tone pot mod with a 250k, audio taper pot. Worlds of difference. Better by far. So happy with it that I hot-glued it to the underside of the pickguard. It's a keeper!

The Guild A150/Ibanez Wholetone combination is getting better, but I think we're headed for an uneasy truce, or marriage of convenience, at best. I can plug mu I-Phone into the amp and blow over changes for practice, which is nice, but the amp is not a great partner to the guitar. And if somebody's gotta go, the amp is mos def the odd man out.

But I shall keep it, since it is a good tool and deserves a home in my studio.

I shall install a set of 13-56 Chromes on the Guild tomorrow. I need a bit more stiffness and resistance to get the feel and sound I'm after, I suspect.

Tune in tomorrow!

[woland]

I was always "set" on getting the Emperor as an "affordable" archtop... one that could be played ACOUSTICALLY as well as plugged in. But this was before the "new order" came in: D'Angelico EXL-1, Godin Jazz, Guild A-150.... I really wish I could play all these side-by-side, but it would be near impossible finding a dealer that stocked them all.

I own EXL-1 and I recently had a chance to try A-150 in local store and was rather impressed - I think it is better sounding guitar. But would have to really try them side by side. In fact Excel was not very impressive until I replace pickup - with real Kent Armstrong one. And with A-150 I liked the stock pup just fine.

[Greentone]

This is a GREAT guitar. Somebody like my son, a superb young musician, can now walk into a music store and purchase a good archtop, these days. In fact, with the Excel, some of the Ibanez archtops, The Loars, etc., he can choose from a selection. BUT, with the Savoy out there, you have the 1000 Rhythm Chief in the equation. That's a game changer, judging from the videos I have perused.

[allanploth]

I love the A-150 Savoy. Amazing build quality, neck, and sound.

I have, though, recently acquired a new archtop that's giving me a sound that is closer to what I'm after, and I can't afford to keep them both; so if anyone is interested, I am going to have to sell the Guild A-150 Savoy.

I have made 2 significant improvements to the guitar: a treble bleed on the volume knob, and a thumb wheel tone knob hiding under the pick guard (the Savoy comes with just a volume knob). Big improvement in terms of tonal variety.

If anyone is interested, please let me know.

[djelley]

I was always "set" on getting the Emperor as an "affordable" archtop... one that could be played ACOUSTICALLY as well as plugged in. But this was before the "new order" came in: D'Angelico EXL-1, Godin Jazz, Guild A-150.... I really wish I could play all these side-by-side, but it would be near impossible finding a dealer that stocked them all.

I own both the Godin Jazz and Guild A-150 and have played the EXL-1. The Godin Jazz wins by a pretty big margin in my opinion, but it also costs quite a bit more. The A-150 is very nice, but seems a bit harder to play for some reason. The Godin just melts in the hand. I really didn't care for the D'Angelico. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I can best sum-up my feelings by saying "meh".

If my budget were $1200 my first choice would be an Eastman AR503, the Godin Jazz if I could find one that cheap, an Eastman AR371, which would save me some money, and then the Guild. Don't get me wrong, I really do like the Guild a lot, I just like those others better.

[nopedals]

If I was paying four figures for a guitar, I would be looking for a great acoustic or a great electric. A floating pickup on a pressed wood top strikes me as being a recipe for neither. It struck me as odd that they would call it an A-150 Savoy. It is much more similar to the CA-100.

[Doctor Jeff]

+ 1 on the Peerless Sunset--I love that guitar. Mine is a red burst. It is definitely more versatile than the Guild, with 2 HB pickups. Being thinline in my book is a plus for the ergonomics. And at $650 it was too good to pass up.

I briefly played a Guild Savoy last year. It looked marvelous and sounded pretty good, though IIRC I had to settle for a Roland acoustic amp and didn't have much time to play around with it. As I already have a similar guitar--a vintage Harmony with a pressed top--I don't have too much need for the Guild, but I really want one of those pickups to put on my Harmony.

Out of curiosity, where is it made? China?