Chazmo said:alpep said:
Hehehe... OK, Al. I assure you I wasn't out to mislead anyone and I doubly assure you that no one's payin' me to do that either. Although, my price is pretty low!!
Hope to see you at our next gathering, whatever / whenever it happens!
As you've seen, O people today are as annoyed as G people were when they closed Westerley. To me it's clear that Fender as a corporation cannot care about TWO premier acoustic brands at the same level: the acquisition of Guild was a calculated marketing move, because Fender tried for many years to sell top acoustics under their name but failed because its image is associate with electric (same thing that happened to Martin when they tried to make solid body guitars) and acutely they understood that they needed a premier american brand, like Guild. They shut down Westerley because at that time they wanted to concentrate all the production in Corona for cost reasons, but in 2003 they also aquired Charvel and Jackson, therefore they had no space enough in a single plant. They bought Tacoma because they were interested in the factory and the people who worked there had a lot of experience with acoustics, so they moved Guild there, another reasonable choice for the corporation. When they went there, they immediately put to the Tacoma brand aside because Guild had more history therefore more appeal, in the end they bought Kaman because that group had many business (Ovation, Adamas, drums, Taks) but not because they were particularly interested in these guitars, so they shut down Tacoma because two plants for acoustics were redundant and they already placed the Ovations aside... Al is right, Balladeers and Legends were always american instruments, and their transfer abroad means nothing good for Os.
