1971 Guild F212 Jumbo 12-String Guitar

While I suppose a 16" curvaceous body makes an F212 really a "mini-jumbo," these still sound jumbo to me. This one is bright, jangly, and has tons of guts and punch even with the Jake-Special set of extra-light gauges I put on these for standard, chordal-use E-to-E tuning.

This guitar has been sitting in the racks for ages waiting for the right customer and said customer walked in yesterday afternoon, sniffed the different 12-strings in the racks, and picked this one out. Since I always owe the consignor of this instrument a spot in line due to the varied number of guitars he has here, I then reset the neck after hours, checked for any other structural needs, and gave it a fret level/dress, new compensated bone saddle, and a good setup this morning. It'd only been hanging-around for about an hour before he bought it and went home. How about that for pressure?

Anyhow, like the other F212s I've worked-on, this one definitely has the goods in the stability department as concerns the neck -- those double truss rods really keep these old Guild necks healthy. There had been various other old repairs (including cleats to a number of smaller hairline top cracks and an old bridge reglue/saddle relocation job), but they were all done by a quality repairman and so my work was mostly getting it to play right.

It left with 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE action at the 12th fret, strung with 22w/46w, 14/36w, 11/26w, 8/18w, 13/13, 10/10 gauges. The long, 25 5/8" scale of these dictates using thinner gauges like these for E-to-E tuning if the owner wants to have an ideal feel.

Woods are: solid x-braced spruce top, solid mahogany back and sides, 2-piece-with-center-strip mahogany neck, rosewood bridge and board.