Oh I thought you meant rare cause they only made the 1971's that one year hehehehe
Good one! I'm much less worried about neck block now, but good thing you're letting a professional check it out.
I agree the nitro cracking around heel joint could simply be because it's shrunk so much with age now.
Only other detail I'd check would be combined height of bridge and saddle , traditional "Ideal" is about 1/2", give or take maybe some 64th" fractions, for optimum energy transfer to top.
I just can't tell from the pic angles.
But I'm sure that's something Mr Mcblane can check and evaluate.
Thing is, a shaved bridge cane make the neck alignment look good when in fact the bridge is now less than ideal height.
I'm just kind of surprised the neck alignment is so good if it's never had a reset (Doesn't look like it, at the neck joint, where one would expect to see evidence of finish touch-up in spite of the probable "aging" crack)
Great phots for really being able to see that stuff.
Regarding Woody's comment about why lights
could sound better than mediums:
Fine guitars are actually designed around what string tension they're intended to handle.
The top and its bracing are designed to produce their optimum vibration under that amount of string tension , which has been called "pre-load".
Tops are literally like drum skins if one considers the strings to be acting like the screws on drums that adjust the skin tension.
Too loose (like light strings on a top designed for mediums) and skin is floppy, no volume or punch.
Too tight, like mediums on a top designed for lights, same thing from the opposite end, skin (top) can't vibrate enough to give good punch and tone. "Too much preload"
So guitar tops sound their best when under the right amount of preload.
I also have a companion hypothesis that if the lights are easier for a player to play, they can also give a bigger arc of travel for the same amount of plucking force and thus sound as good as mediums, even though there's less tension.
There's an electricity analogy here: it's not the
volts (total tension) that kill you, it's the
amperage (how big an arc of travel the gauge allows at tension)
I think that's why Guild went to lights on almost everything in late Westerly.
We just don't know for sure what Guild was using when that '71 was built.
It looks as though it's been well-cared for and may well have been strung with lights all its life, and that might be why the neck angle is so good besides.