To be fair, you were thrown off by
@CHC19672024 's comment that he believed the DV4 was released in '96. Since that was my first Guild catalog, I knew better.
Funny story, though, when I first joined up all those years ago, I remember
@plaidseason mentioning he had a DV4. Since I'd never heard of it at the time, even after lurking for a couple of years, I thought he must be be mistaken. When I finally discovered it actually existed, I always remembered Plaidseason, and I'm glad to see he's still posting to finally see my "confession"
. Plaid's creds are good as far as I'm concerned, now.
The DV-6 had a chesterfield, gold hardware, and upgrade binding and rosette and for sure the shaved braces which aren't mentioned for the DV-4. (Although it might have actually got them). So don't think they renamed the DV-6. Just tried to get a little more economy out of the flat-back 'hog platform, I think.
My personal hypothesis over the years is that they tried the DV25 (flatback) and it still didn't get any traction. The DV-6 was already filling the D40's slot and would have been redundant with the DV25, but the DV-6 was like a D40 on steroids at the time.
I think they got smart and brought back the D40 in '00, and the DV's-4,-6, and -25 were gone (until the Tacoma revival of the 4 & 6, as MIM models). I suspect they put all the DV-6 know-how into that last Westerly era D40 (Note the shaved braces in description, for example).
It even had a snakehead headstock, first and only time for the D40, and carried over into very early Corona: