Excerpt from Guitarist Review
Styled along ubiquitous squareshouldered Martin lines the D16N is Farida's cheapest dreadnought to feature rosewood back and sides. Some competitors are managing to offer solid backs or even all-solid construction at this price or lower, but the D16N sticks with laminated timber here. It's genuine rosewood though, not simply an outer veneer of the wood.The top is solid Engelmann spruce, and a very clean, presentable example too, with uniformly close graining and plenty of quality-indicative cross-silking. Cosmetics aren't ostentatious, but they're tasteful and precisely executed. The top is edged with white/black 'Liquorice Allsort' binding - echoed in the style of soundhole rosette - accompanied by plain white fingerboard and back binding and similar heel cap, and an attractive wood-mosaic centre strip down the straight-grained bookmatched back.
The body's gloss lacquering is buffed to a high standard, and the only, very minor, flaw is slightly less-than-perfect edging where this meets the satin finish of the neck along either side of the heel. The tidiness of internal workmanship is exemplary, something for which our other two instruments attract equal praise.
The glue-jointed three-piece, fullscale mahogany neck is stained to a mid-brown, and is fashioned to an average width with a slick, shallow profile starting at under 20mm near the nut. This is a very easy to grip, is a fast proposition, and reassuringly straight and true, though there are a couple of aspects that could be improved upon.
The fret ends, while not sharp, are quite abruptly bevelled and need rounding off for ultimate comfort, and the tops feel a tad scratchy when string bending. These will likely be self-smoothing in time, but a polish-up would be the quicker answer.
One not altogether welcome surprise is the tight 51mm string spacing at the bridge, reminiscent of old Yamaha FGs. You get used to it for fingerstyle - and for strumming it's not an issue anyway - but given the ample leeway outside the top and bottom E strings along the fingerboard, the factory could provide something nearer the mainstream 55mm simply by rejigging the holes for the bridge pins to a slightly wider array.
SOUNDS:
It's always good to hear a dreadnought performing like a dreadnought, and this one has plenty of bottle. Volume is enthusiastic, the dynamics are supple and sustainful, and the tone possesses the kind of brightness that projects incisively without sounding harsh. Underlying this is a decent vein of low-end warmth and richness, which endows a firm underpinning whether picking or strumming. An excellent all-rounder for the money.
Review by Jim Chapman and Roger Newell that appeared in Guitarist Magazine November 2006 issue
Download the full review in Guitarist Magazine here
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