Well, I came down to the city, and right now I'm sitting in a friend's place in Makati. A few hours ago I dropped by RJ in Ayala Center and ran the hands over that Guild 12 string that's apparently been in there forever.
It's a JF30-12, maple sides, arched maple back, spruce top, 3 piece neck, 2 truss rods. Heavy, and definitely neck-heavy. Neck is on the chunky side, but it's a 12, and the Guild 12-strings have a reputation for lasting forever. This is one step back from top of the line, which in a jumbo maple 12 would be F412 or JF65-12 (basically the same thing in different years).
They say the guitar is "new old stock", but it's made in Westerly, RI, which puts it back before 2001, when Guild production moved to Corona, CA. So it's more like "new REALLY old stock".
It doesn't sound that great. A lot of that is the strings, I'd bet they've been on there 5 years at least and they are as dead as a Congressman's morals. I didn't even try to tune it, too much work; wasn't that far out but enough to give a bit of "that ain't right". Still, there's more sustain than a badly strung guitar deserves to have, and I get a little feeling that given a bit of love she might open up and sing right nicely.
Unfortunately, they want 89,000 freakin' pesos, which is just insane. You can get an F412 in the US for under $1500, I doubt a JF30-12 would be too far over $1000. Sure there's gonna be a price differential here, but that's ridiculous.
The salesman asked me what I thought, I told him "needs new strings". He comes back with... "We'll put new strings on! We'll even include... THE CASE!!". I briefly considered smacking him, just to wake him up, or at least telling him that for that price they should be including a night with the cashier, but didn't. Didn't buy it either.
Still, sayyang, hope she ends up with someone who will treat her right...
