Buying guide · updated September 2026
Dreadnought, Orchestra Model or Grand Auditorium?
Pick the body shape before the colour. A dreadnought and an orchestra model are further apart in feel than a Yellow and a Red of the same shape — and the shape is the part you cannot change afterwards.
Reading the code
The shape is the second part of a Furch model name, between the series and the wood pair. "Yellow Gc SR" is a Yellow-series Grand Auditorium with a cutaway. A lower-case c always means a cutaway — the scoop in the upper body that lets your hand reach the top frets.
Furch's own literature names two of these outright: it calls a Gc a "Grand Auditorium body shape with cutaway" and an OMc an "Orchestra Model body shape with cutaway". D is the dreadnought, which is the standard term across the whole acoustic world rather than anything specific to Furch.
| D / Dc | Dreadnought. The big square-shouldered body most people picture when they think "acoustic guitar". |
| G / Gc | Grand Auditorium. A waisted body, slightly shallower and narrower than a dreadnought. |
| OM / OMc | Orchestra Model. The smallest of the three here, with a tighter waist and a shorter, more compact body. |
How they differ to play
Body size does two things at once: it sets how much air the guitar moves, and it sets how the instrument sits against you. Those pull in different directions, which is why there is no best answer.
| Dreadnought | The most volume and the deepest low end. It pushes air. Made for strumming, for playing over other people, and for anyone who wants the guitar to fill a room. The trade is that it can bury its own detail under a heavy hand, and it is the biggest thing to hold. |
| Grand Auditorium | The middle path, and the reason it is the most popular shape here. Nearly a dreadnought's projection with a more even balance across the strings, so a fingerpicked line stays distinct. Comfortable seated. If you do not know what you want, this is the one to play first. |
| Orchestra Model | The most balanced and the most controlled. Less sheer volume, more clarity between individual notes — which is what fingerstyle players are usually after. Also the easiest to hold for a long session, and the friendliest to a smaller frame. |
Whether to take the cutaway
A cutaway buys you comfortable access to roughly the top four or five frets. If you play above the twelfth fret at all — melody work, jazz voicings, anything up the neck — take it.
The usual objection is that removing that much body costs volume and low end. There is something in it, but on a modern guitar of this quality the difference is small enough that most players would not identify it blind, and far smaller than the difference between two shapes. Choose it on whether you go up there, not on tone anxiety.
Worth knowing which way our own wall leans, because it tells you what Furch actually builds and what sells: cutaways heavily outnumber non-cutaways in the stock below.
Every shape on the wall right now
Live from our inventory — this table is built at every deploy, so it reflects what is genuinely available rather than what we had last month.
| D — Dreadnought | 3 in stock · $2,748–$3,663 |
| Dc — Dreadnought, cutaway | 5 in stock · $2,692–$4,439 |
| G — Grand Auditorium | 2 in stock · $3,914 |
| Gc — Grand Auditorium, cutaway | 24 in stock · $1,850–$7,899 |
| OM — Orchestra Model | 3 in stock · $2,699–$3,914 |
| OMc — Orchestra Model, cutaway | 12 in stock · $2,515–$3,914 |
What we would ask you
Three questions settle it faster than any amount of reading. Do you mostly strum or mostly fingerpick? Do you play sitting or standing, and for how long at a stretch? And do you ever play above the twelfth fret?
Strumming, standing, staying in open position — dreadnought. Fingerpicking, seated, playing up the neck — orchestra model with a cutaway. Anything in between, or genuinely unsure — Grand Auditorium, and you will not regret it.
There is no substitute for holding all three. We keep every shape in the room at once, which is unusual, and the difference is obvious in about thirty seconds of playing. Book a visit, or call and describe what you play.
A note on what this page does not claim
The playing characteristics above are the broad, well-established differences between these body sizes. They hold generally, but how strongly you hear them on any two specific guitars depends on the woods, the bracing and the individual instrument — which is exactly why we would rather you played them than took our word for it.