We now play Yamahas

...also, per Yamaha, all TRCs will be correctly positioned.

Westerly Wood said:

I hear Yamaha is planning to change the name of the F55 back to the F50.

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I guess that is the least of the problems to solve...
Ralf

Westerly Wood said:

...also, per Yamaha, all TRCs will be correctly positioned.

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Well, as I like the Guild shape I hope they don't offer square TRCs...

Ralf

Westerly Wood said:

I hear Yamaha is planning to change the name of the F55 back to the F50.

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<humor>

And you are close but not quite right. Remember when Fender wanted to be a lifestyle brand, wanted to sell audio components and had an ad campaign with VW and Slash? Well Yamaha wants to do something similar. But they are partnering with Ford and going for that "sing around the campfire while camping" vibe. So they want to pair an acoustic guitar with a specially equipped outdoor, maybe even off road, vehicle. So to make that work they are renaming the F55 to be the F150.

They are also looking at amplifier and electric guitar pairings to go with the F150 Lightning but the plans are not as far along.

</humor>

SFIV1967 said:

I guess that is the least of the problems to solve...
Ralf

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Disagree. This is IMPORTANT!

banjomike said:

I agree.
Yamaha has had an American presence for a long time; they purchased the small California company that makes the Pacifica series of solid-body electrics a long time ago.
They never messed with that company at all. It's still small, and is still making guitars.

But I think Guild holds far better commercial prospects than the Pacificas ever had as a premier American brand.

I tend to think Yamaha would move all of Guild's imports into their own house, but will leave the American guitars alone. The top range Guilds really fill a gap in their product line their best Japanese-made guitars just can't fill, . . .

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This is really good news (to me, anyway), Mike. I never heard of Pacificas guitars, but if they left it alone after acquisition, maybe they'll find a way to get some mileage out of US production in CMG's facility. I can't really speculate much further without going into gloomy territory though. I'd place a strong bet, though, that Yamaha wants to uphold Guild's reputation, so I'm hopeful.

Nuuska said:

Since US is soooooo much larger than Finland - do you have many competing "Center of US" places ?

Even though our country is about 1,5XMinnesota - we have at least three competing places of "The Spot"

They are all within maybe 20 miles from each other. Calculated by East-West & North-South cordinates - or the gravity point of the map - including or excluding the sea area - etc etc - main purpose naturally is to lure the imaginary tourist to empty his/hers wallett at your shop . . .

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According to Wikipedia, there are two different geographic centers of the United states, depending on whether you count Alaska and Hawaii. Lebanon Kansas is the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states.

chazmo said:

I never heard of Pacificas guitars,

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Ralf

Westerly Wood said:

...also, per Yamaha, all TRCs will be correctly positioned.

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Is that enforced by a TRC with bi-lateral symmetry or by positioning screw holes so it can only be installed one way, i.e. two by the nut and one farther up the headstock? The fix could be simple if we can convince Yamaha that it is important. But then there will be a bunch of folks sitting around and talking about the good old days when you had to know what you were doing to get a TRC installed properly.

chazmo said:

This is really good news (to me, anyway), Mike. I never heard of Pacificas guitars, but if they left it alone after acquisition, maybe they'll find a way to get some mileage out of US production in CMG's facility. I can't really speculate much further without going into gloomy territory though. I'd place a strong bet, though, that Yamaha wants to uphold Guild's reputation, so I'm hopeful.

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Westerly Wood said:

...also, per Yamaha, all TRCs will be correctly positioned.

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Or change to rectangular ones. Problem solved.

Westerly Wood said:

I hear Yamaha is planning to change the name of the F55 back to the F50.

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Well, if they do that, it will be no trouble at all to change the F-512 Maple back to F-412.

Westerly Wood said:

Bottom of Yamaha Guitar Group website. Guild is there.

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I think the guitar brands should be on the top line (Yamaha, Cordoba, Guild) to make them stand out more. In fact the Guild logo should either be upsized or the script logo used instead.. The amp brands should move to the bottom line.

chazmo said:

This is really good news (to me, anyway), Mike. I never heard of Pacificas guitars, but if they left it alone after acquisition, maybe they'll find a way to get some mileage out of US production in CMG's facility. I can't really speculate much further without going into gloomy territory though. I'd place a strong bet, though, that Yamaha wants to uphold Guild's reputation, so I'm hopeful.

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Me, too.
Yamaha's top American exec left the company to manage Fender in the 1980s when Fender was close to bankruptcy, and that guy was very aggressive and effective in turning Fender around.
Yamaha does that. The company hunts for good executives who are natives to the nation and have experience that's all within the product they are put in charge of. Their Japanese experts only come in when they're called to come by their division commander.

I returned to Gibson Montana as a full-time employee after 10 years as an independent contractor. I came just after those production experts from Yamaha had just left after about 6 months spent overhaulling Montana's production line. They had been hired to do it with Henry Jusciewicz' approval.

It was very interesting; most of their improvements were very small-lots of little specialized hand tools, and small techniques mostly, but there was a lot of attention paid to employee morale and performance that was all directed at better in-house communication and cooperation.
It was pretty amazing- the hand tools were all superb and really sped up some very slow procedures that always had defied speed when I worked there before. The production flow was much, much better.

This makes me think that Yamaha won't make any serious mistakes with Guild.

7GuildsandanSG said:

Or change to rectangular ones. Problem solved.

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ew.

banjomike said:

. . .

This makes me think that Yamaha won't make any serious mistakes with Guild.

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From your mouth to Al Dronge's ears.

banjomike said:

They had been hired to do it with H**** J*********' approval.

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Shhhh! Never mention "he who must not be named".

banjomike said:

Their Japanese experts only come in when they're called to come by their division commander.

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That's interesting. I wonder if it's a cultural thing, i.e. - Americans are more likely to listen to Americans.

twocorgis said:

According to Wikipedia, there are two different geographic centers of the United states, depending on whether you count Alaska and Hawaii. Lebanon Kansas is the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states.

Geographic center of the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Well where's the other one?

GGJaguar said:

That's interesting. I wonder if it's a cultural thing, i.e. - Americans are more likely to listen to Americans.

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Except for the British Invasion.

And maybe that bossa-nova thing just before that.