Since CMG bought Guild and probably saved it from disappearing or becoming an offshore only brand neglected by FMIC, LTG has been littered with discussions concerning decisions CMG has made. Many of those decisions don't make a lot of sense to us because most of us know the history and tradition better than CMG does or place a higher importance on those factors than CMG does. When trying to make sense of what CMG is doing the most rational explanations follow the money. When CMG opened production at Oxnard my recollection is that they made "feel good" type of statement that they wanted to offer all of the traditional models eventually. That was not a promise but did shift the question from "will they make?" to "when will they make?". The generic answer to that is they will make something when they believe they can make money doing so. So if we really want to know and CMG won't commit, we should look at the market.
Tangentially Paul Simon is not going to help Guild sell F-30's. The small sample of people young enough to be my kids or grandkids that I have queried don't listen to him. If they have heard of him it is because their parents/grandparents played Simon and Garfinkle recordings from the 60's and 70's or they are Star Wars geeks who know he was briefly married to Carrie Fisher. The generation that remembers him with fondness seems just as likely to buy vintage F-30s than new ones. Once again the biggest competition a new MIA Guild has is a vintage MIA Guild.
IMO. YMMV.
My opinion is you are likely correct in your observations, however:
I think that the current Guild company has not taken an approach that will help them much. They could go with more than one angle, and different approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive.
They could make classic models that emphasize the iconic nature of some of their guitars. I think part of the issue is the history. They've had so many changes, it wasn't possible to maintain consistency in their marketing ... like- kids today may not care that Cat Stevens used the Gibson J200, but it's iconic partially because he used it, then the next guy used, then the next guy used it- among many other guys. What I'm getting at is Cat Stevens might have picked up the J200 because Elvis did. Then the next guy picked it up because Cat Stevens played it. Then that guy became the current player that kids look up to ...
You have similar stories with Guild's iconic models, but Guild themselves do not seem to be doing much to broadcast these things (maybe a little but on their Instagram, etc.). My biggest beef is their current models don't really look or spec out like the classic models. If they made a line of "Iconic classics" or whatever, along with the cheapies ... they might be onto something.
What I'm getting at is- sure maybe teenage kids looking to buy a guitar don't even know who Zal from the Lovin' Spoonful is. But lots of musicians do, and musicians note the kinds of guitars that these classic fellows played. So if done right, you'd have current players grabbing these classic models- and kids learning to play looking to the current players.
Look at what Guild was doing in the '60s when they were very successful- they had lots of famous players in their ads and catalogs. Mark Dronge still does this with DR strings. As far as I can tell, it works well.
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