Guild Artist Award

This is a brand new in box 2014 model--really cool and really rare to find new.  

From Guild:  Artist Award is our flagship jazz guitar. Acoustic archtop of finest materials: carved spruce top, solid curly maple back and sides, five-piece maple neck, select ebony fretboard, inlays of natural abalone and mother of pearl. In a word, beautiful.

Floating pickup permits amplification without interfering with the true acoustic nature of this masterpiece. Guild has made only 1600 of these in 40 years.

Please note: Certificate of Authenticity signed by Ren Ferguson, revered luthier formally of Gibson Bozeman. Truly beautiful to look at and also sounds great.  A long term collector buy or could be an amazing every day player. Text or email with questions.  

This may be as good as it gets for an iconic jazz piece--a lot less than you would pay for a Gibson L5 of similar quality and presence!  If near Phoenix this is worth a demo.

Some reviews: 

"Simply , a unbelievable archtop , only a DeAngelica or a pre-war Gibson L-5 could even Rival this guitar..."

"playing for about 30 years mostly Jazz the last 20. I tried a bunch of guitars when I bought this one including an old Gibson Johhny Smith, Campellone, Comins and the new Benedetto Artist Award. All of those guitars were much more expensive. I felt the AA was certainly competitive with them. I also owned a 1998 Gibson ES-175 and there is no comparison (the Gibson was awful). For the money, this guitar is a great high quality solid carved top instrument. If you can find a good one buy it!"

"the best jazz box I've owned, and I've had older L5's, 175's,"

"Bottom line: outside of an expensive Benedetto, Campellone, or other private luthier's work, the Guild AA is the closest thing."