The Fender Years

[walrus]

The amazing thing is, that from Westerly to Corona to Tacoma to NH & the Nashville custom shop, Fender continued spending the money required to build consistently outstanding instruments.

And we are all happy they did!

walrus

 

[Rambozo96]

I don’t know if Corona made Guild’s are any good and I never cared for the bad/good years of a guitar company’s production as it usually generates buzzwords for the sake of making a sale but I do know that a Tacoma era D-55 I played was just mind blowing. I been meaning to find a Tacoma but apparently they had finishing issues that persisted until Fender stepped in which case by then Tacoma seemed to be making just Guild guitars exclusively. Did Fender ruin Guild? Many would say yes but I would think they probably weren’t in the best of financial shape upon the sale to FMIC because remember Guild apparently went through a bankruptcy in the late 80’s and as a result thinned out their offerings substantially. I’d be hard pressed to blame Ovation’s fate on FMIC because unfortunately they went from a hot ticket item to being the butt of the acoustic snob’s jokes even though they were the first to use piezo style under saddle pickups expanding upon the Baldwin Prismatone’s design which unfortunately due to thr general public’s limited knowledge of impedance matching signals is where Ovation got the unfair bad rep for having a thin quacky tone. I always wondered if they would have fared better if they made a more traditional flattop or even making the bowl back out of wood.

 

[Br1ck]

The fact that Guild has survived at all is amazing when you think of it, given Fender's ability to kill off good companies they have bought. Is there even one Guild dealer in the SF Bay area? There are a very few that carry the imports only. I don't know how I'd buy a D 55 except online.

 

[Bill Ashton]

I will inject, that in late 2014/early 2015, sort of as fallout from the failed IPO, the
Texas Pacific Group (J Crew/Burger King, et al) got a controlling interest in Fender
and started the purge that horrified us, while intending to make Fender a "Life Style"
brand...how'd that work out for ya? Ovation, which in NH was a really small shop, was
closed, as was Guild. CB Percussion (if I have that right) was closed.

In the fallout, a relative of a senior staff member of Fender bought Guild and moved everything
to Oxnard. We Easterners can roil at this, but the brand stayed alive. New plant built. Large
amount of Pacific Rim pieces imported to keep the brand alive. But we now have Guild's manufactured
in the USA again, though seemingly a small part of the total line.

 

[beecee]

Actually Fender built a dedicated assembly area (building?) for Guild because flat-tops had never been built in Corona.

They also brought in some tooling and machinery from Westerly like the archback press, and installed a state-of the-art spray booth to be able to spray NCL in compliance with California's ever-more restrictive air quality regs.


Nope, Corona '02-'04 and Tacoma '05-'08.


HI Dougling, welcome aboard!

Fender's purchase of Guild was finalized in November of '95 while they were still at Westerly, and as Cougar suspected, they did largely practice a "hands-off" approach to the actual manufacturing process although they did take some measures to improve QC:

Several years ago member Hideglue, who worked in Westerly, mentioned "Guild's QC reached a zenith under Fender".

Some folks were a little riled buy this, thinking he meant the Fender-era guitars were better, and he had to take pains to explain that what he meant was that Fender did some things like instituting checklists to ensure no QC steps were overlooked, but not that the guitars themselves were therefore better.

In '97 Fender also opened up the Guild Nashville Custom shop which specialized in even higher-end builds than Westerly could allocate resources for, as well as special editions and custom orders. In our host GAD's Guild Catalogs page more in-depth info about the shop can be found, in the Guild Gallery magazines in the '90's section: https://www.gad.net/Blog/guild-guitar-catalogs/.

Westerly itself was a very old building with ventilation consisting of opening the skylights. Not a great foundation to start climate-controlled manufacturing for even greater consistency in the finished product. Also, Rhode Island was starting to implement air quality regs similar to California's and that would likely have doomed Westerly's ability to spray NCL without expensive retrofitting of the building itself.

Fender decided it would be better to move Guild to Corona, most likely a more cost-effective solution than trying to "fix" Westerly. So Westerly was shut down in August of '01 although finished inventory was still being shipped as late as November, like my F65ce.

Corona's first official production year was '02, and that's when they started hitting some bumps in the road: A high rate of finish blemishes early on, and negative critical assessment of the build quality there.

Former member Jay Pilzer wrote an article about it in Vintage Guitar:

Guild in the Post-Fender Era | Vintage Guitar® magazine

Since its beginnings in 1952, Guild has gone through many changes in ownership, location, marketing approach, and design philosophy. In the course of a change in ownership and three moves, the Guild line has seen major changes in materials, structural specifications, equipment, personnel, and...

www.vintageguitar.com

Once they got over their learning curve, the guitars were just fine. Coronas have actually aged well and many members love theirs, myself included.

But, during that time Fender acquired the Tacoma Guitar Company and decided to move Guild manufacturing to Tacoma Washington.
So Corona was shut down in summer of '04 and moved to Tacoma. Unsold inventory as well as warranty return and "B" stock was liquidated through an outfit called MIRC.

MIRC in turn undertook to ensure none of those guitars could later be submitted to Fender for warranty claim by obliterating the s/n's, and in turn sold 'em to dealers, with no warranty, even though many of 'em may have had no actual manufacturing defects, or only finish blems.

The flood of cheap unwarranted guitars gave Guild's rep a black eye and alienated dealers struggling to sell warrantied "A" stock against 'em.

But Fender did continue investing in Guild R&D and also brought out the GAD (Guild Acoustic Design) line of MIC guitars in spring of '04.

The fruits of the R&D investment were seen in Tacoma, '05-08. By all accounts Tacoma also signaled a return to lighter build styles.

But, during that time Fender acquired Ovation Guitars and decided to move Guild manufacturing to Ovation's facility in New Hartford Connecticut. Never one to learn a lesson the first time around, Fender let good ol' MIRC handle the liquidation chores once again with results surprisingly similar to the first round's from Corona.

I know 2 local dealers who dropped Guild at that point, having lost confidence in the brand itself.

In New Hartford Fender decided to implement a "low volume/high quality" business model and attempted to re-make Guild into a sort of "entry-level boutique" brand. They decided they no longer wanted it to be just another one of the dozens of brands on the wall at a Guitar Center.

This was when the complaints about the difficulty of just finding one to play started to arise. New Hartford's output was very low, with output estimated at substantially less than 5000 units/year.

Experiencing financial woes of their own, Fender finally decided to throw in the towel in 2014 and sold Guild to Cordoba Music Group.

Cordoba built a dedicated manufacturing plant for the flat-tops in Oxnard CA and took 2 years to get it into production due to California's byzantine regulatory processes. (Spraying NCL was NOT actually ever a problem, it was one of the first approvals obtained. Electric power turned out to be a major bug-a-boo)

SO: 4 plants with low output in 13 years, with around 3 accumulated years of no production, now you know why they're so hard to find in a brick-and mortar store.

I'd thank you for persevering but I bet the M20's reward enough..

This could be a sticky...or required reading for newbies

 

[adorshki]

This could be a sticky...or required reading for newbies

Submit it to the mods, buddy, it just seems a little self-aggrandizing for me to do it, and I haven't been in the self-aggrandizing mood lately.
Just happy to contribute and truly surprised and heartwarmed by all the likes.

 

[adorshki]

The fact that Guild has survived at all is amazing when you think of it, given Fender's ability to kill off good companies they have bought. Is there even one Guild dealer in the SF Bay area? There are a very few that carry the imports only. I don't know how I'd buy a D 55 except online.

When checking their dealer locator, just noticed Keith Holland Guitars in Los Gatos shows up, (408)395-0761.
Keith did the 2nd fret job on my D25 a few years back, it was just like brand new again after having been done poorly by no less than Mark Brown's (Doobie Bros. equipment tech) shop in Campbell back in '98 or '99.

So I like to give 'im shout-outs. Wondering if maybe he's an authorized repair center too, now. Might be time to get my F65ce's bridge lift fixed, finally. He was always my back-up plan, but wasn't authorized last time I talked to him.

 

[Br1ck]

Last time I checked, Keith Holland had only a few import Guilds.

 

[adorshki]

Last time I checked, Keith Holland had only a few import Guilds.

Gotcha, I was afraid it might just be that.

 

[JohnW63]

As a " Times they are a changin' " idea...Have new guitar players changed how they buy guitars? Heck, have some of us older guitar players changed our ways? What percentage need to handle the guitar before you buy? Think about all the Reverb and Online purchases we know about in this forum. Of course most of us already know what to expect from a Guild, but newer players may spend a lot of time watching YouTube reviews and forum accolades and not need to hold the instrument. What percentage of purchases are now made in brick and mortar locations? How many purchases are made because someone went in for Guitar A and walked out with Guitar B because they grabbed it off the wall? If course that last option will never happen if there isn't a Guild ON the wall to start with.

Heck, you can buy a car out of a vending machine, now!
Checkout Carvana...

 

[adorshki]

Heck, you can buy a car out of a vending machine, now!
Checkout Carvana...

Guitar Center's been looking for an idea like that to boost retail location profitability. Y'oughta give 'em a call.

 

[7GuildsandanSG]

As a " Times they are a changin' " idea...Have new guitar players changed how they buy guitars? Heck, have some of us older guitar players changed our ways? What percentage need to handle the guitar before you buy? Think about all the Reverb and Online purchases we know about in this forum. Of course most of us already know what to expect from a Guild, but newer players may spend a lot of time watching YouTube reviews and forum accolades and not need to hold the instrument. What percentage of purchases are now made in brick and mortar locations? How many purchases are made because someone went in for Guitar A and walked out with Guitar B because they grabbed it off the wall? If course that last option will never happen if there isn't a Guild ON the wall to start with.

Heck, you can buy a car out of a vending machine, now!
Checkout Carvana...

Don't need to handle. Never developed a preference for neck width or thickness or anything like that. Last 4 Guilds I bought online, never handled it no problem.

 

[bobouz]

Up until around 2007, I was exclusively a try-it & buy-it in the store guy. But I believe it was in that year when a GC manager I was friendly with, told me they were going to put all their used instruments online, and you’d be able to buy from any store, but do a return/refund with your local store if you didn’t like it. I think I started salivating almost immediately.

In the ensuing years (and especially the first few when not everyone seemed to know about this), I made out like a bandit over & over again on instruments that had been on my wish list - and it was only because of the local return/refund policy that I was willing to travel down that road. I’m still a try-it & buy-it kinda guy. It’s just that now I was able to try them at home.

But I still will not buy any instrument without a full refund option, and i prefer not to mess with shipping a guitar either, so again, the local return option is huge. Essentially, I see no reason why I should take on significant risk within the purchase process, because there are way more reasons why I might reject a guitar than the much narrower possibility that it will be a keeper.

So buy it outright without trying it - just does not compute!

 

[Bill Ashton]

I cannot buy without trying. Did that a couple times, did not work out. My neck profile/bridge-string-spacing requirement has changed over time, as have the manufacturers. No matter how good the deal, I ain't buyin' unless I try it! (Of course, I am not the market, have just about everything I will ever want/need...fodder for another thread )

 

[adorshki]

Don't need to handle. Never developed a preference for neck width or thickness or anything like that. Last 4 Guilds I bought online, never handled it no problem.

I actually bought my D40 unplayed, on a phone call. Saw the Spring '04 catalog I think it was, online, had the GAD line in it. Uh-oh, MIC Guilds? Thought Fender was about to convert 'em to a badge engineered line. Thought I better buy one more US-built Guild if I could, and the Havens D40 was just announced. Called Guitar Showcase to ask if they had one, they did, cut me a great deal, I told 'em I'd be there in an hour. Picked it up, dropped it off at home on the way back to work. Had utmost confidence based on the first 2.

Was kinda surprised it was the sonic runt of the litter for a few years, took about 5 years to start opening up, but also took about that long to get enough playing time on it. Love it to death now, as much as any of 'em.

 

[adorshki]

I will inject, that in late 2014/early 2015, sort of as fallout from the failed IPO, the
Texas Pacific Group (J Crew/Burger King, et al) got a controlling interest in Fender
and started the purge that horrified us, while intending to make Fender a "Life Style"
brand...how'd that work out for ya?

The picks-in-a-condom idea was a flop.

 

[walrus]

The picks-in-a-condom idea was a flop.

Oh, that's gotta hurt!

walrus

 

[Bill Ashton]

I was thinking more polo-shirts, sweat suits and maybe glassware...

 

[adorshki]

Oh, that's gotta hurt!

walrus

Well you're supposed to take 'em out first. They didn't make that real clear.

Lawsuits were settled quietly out of court before things got out of hand.

 

[ParadiseSeeker]

I love my Guild GAD-50E (2006) and GAD M-120E (2014), both sound and loom fantastic, especially with their clear (50E) and black (M-120E) pickguard.

Fender did a great job with their Guild production. Never heard a GAD that was not awesome. I also own an all-new, american D-20E.