I was examining my ‘70 D 40 in sunshine and noticed fingernail gouges between the first position fingerboard frets. I can’t imagine most left-hand male fingernails being long enough to do this so I blithely assume a previous owner was female. The top purfling has also been replaced with herringbone and a snazzy thin red stripe, though the top seems original, so it seems someone with a fair amount of craft but lacking luthier-quality skill was bored enough to replace the purfling, quite possibly a later owner than the person with long nails. At some dark-age point, another owner who evidently lacked any skill at all scraped the peeling and pocked (judging from extant condition of the back and sides) top nitro off, evidently with a large paint scraper, removing the silk-screen headstock logo as well as leaving gouges in the lower bout, and applied at least one gloppy coat of what seemed to be spar varnish to the entire top, fretboard and headstock. The pickguard (ripped off with a quite a bit of spruce gone with it) and TRC were never replaced and evidently lost. The guy I bought it from claims he got it in that condition, and with the fretboard dived so far into the body, he was only able to play first position chords on it. That, fortunately for him, was the way he like to play anyway. He had the endpin drilled for a jack as well. Recently, in my hands, the D40 has undergone gradual fretboard and neck jacking, bridge shaving, new pickguard, TRC and pins, and an entire poly refinish.
The guitar sounds and plays like a dream now, and I’m skeptical of assuming that nitro-to-poly or any careful refinishing necesarily adversely affects tone. That the Guild sounds so unbelievably good at this point is a testament to the design and craftsmanship that allowed the instrument to undergo such radical changes.
This guitar is quite a survivor. Assuming from all the changes noted, I am at least the fifth owner of this D40 in forty years.
The guitar sounds and plays like a dream now, and I’m skeptical of assuming that nitro-to-poly or any careful refinishing necesarily adversely affects tone. That the Guild sounds so unbelievably good at this point is a testament to the design and craftsmanship that allowed the instrument to undergo such radical changes.
This guitar is quite a survivor. Assuming from all the changes noted, I am at least the fifth owner of this D40 in forty years.
