When and how did you acquire your first Guild?

West R Lee,

The "C" in this case stands for cutaway and as you can see it is of the Florentine variety. Sorry for the so-so picture quality but these are the only photos I've got on hand right now. I'm a total neophyte at this so I hope it works. More to follow later.
[IMG:531:799]http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o104/gf60rc/GuitarFront_0942.jpg[/img]

[IMG:452:799]http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o104/gf60rc/GuitarBackside952.jpg[/img]

Gruhn Loon

That's one great looking flattop there Gruhn.

West

Oh yes, Loon !

That really does speak to me !

Lovely !!

Here is my progression to Guild guitars.

~ I first tried to play on a giant Silvertone Archtop with a horrible action that belonged to my uncle.
~ Then I got my first guitar whic was a $60.00 Norma.
~ With my first summer job I scraped up $150.00 for a Yamaha 12 string ('66).
~ The summer before college I worked in a music store and almost bought a Mosrite Resonator guitar, but opted instead for a Goya 6 string ('70). From a collectors standpoint, I wish I had gotten and kept the Mosrite.
~ 1985 with a big tax return check I bought a new Martin HD-28 Brazillian Rosewood, built in the custom shop.
~ About a year later I got my first "Second guitar", a '72 D-28S.
~ In '92 I got laid off, we had our first child and after I was out of work for a year I was forced to sell both Martins.....hence my first Guild was shown to me by my guitar instructor who said I looked like someone shot my dog after loosing the Martins. It was a nearly flawless '74 D-25.
~ Christmas of 2005 I got my '78 D-40SB.
~ This past spring I got the '99 Bluesbird.

Now I am trying to determine when my marriage can stand another Guild!! :wink:

Here's my tale...

I started learning guitar when I was 10, on a "Stella" flat top... $17 used with the tone of plywood and mile high strings. After a year of lessons, my instructor told my folks I needed a better guitar, so I received a cherry red Harmony "Rocket" electric for my 11th birthday.

I got my first "real" job at 17, working in a lab at the med school in Portland,OR. I told my folks that, as soon as I had saved my first $1,000 for college, the next paycheck was going to buy a new acoustic guitar.

So, In January of 73 I set out on my quest... looked at Gibsons and Epiphones in half a dozen shops... and didn't find anything that sang to me. Then, hanging on the wall in a little shop on N Burnside in Portland were three Guilds... The flat-backed all mahogany D25 was a little over my "budget" ($225 w/o case), the D35 even higher ($265 w/o case), and the third (which I now think was a D40) was way out of my reach. I played the D25 and was ready to buy.. UNtil I tried the D35. Once I played it, I was hooked... that guitar just sang to me. I went home empty handed the first trip... thought about it, and what my folks would say about my spending more than a month's pay on a guitar. But I went back and payed the $265 in cash and brought the D35 home on the bus two days later. At the time, that was the most money I had ever carried in my pocket. I couldn't afford the hardshell case, so the shop loaned my a pasteboard case until my next paycheck. The final bill with a Guild hardshell was $300... which was a lot of money for a 17 year old kid in 1973. When my dad found out how much I has spent, he about went ballistic.

I still have that Guild D35... it's been with me through thick and thin (college, a couple girl friends, my first marriage)... suffering some abuse along the way (I cringe to think of the way I treated it in my youth). It still has an incredible voice... warm and bright at the same time. I think it is still my most verstatile guitar, sounding great in any tuning, either finger picked or strummed.

After all these years, I think my Dad has forgiven me for my youthful extravagance.

The conclusion to my earlier story of my first Guild is so similar to Gardman's I started to laugh. My dad also found out that I had spent my hard earned 400 bucks on my D-44M; my brother exposed my sin at the dinner table and my dad went bersek and started chasing around the dinner table attemting to strangle me. My mom started to scream and the frecas ceased. I went up to my room and learned some new JD and Cat Stevens songs and didnt reappear until the next morning after Dad went to work. My brother was still grinning. This also occurred in '73.

Well this sounds like a great way to lure people to my web site.

You can find my story here;

http://guildsofgrot.com/history.html

My first and only Guild at the moment is a black 1997 Guild S-100. I've bought it by casuality. Fender changed the spanish dealer 4 years ago and previous one selled a lot of guitars for a good deal. I bought this guitar because I knew it was cheap and good, but I didn't know how good it was. Each day I enjoy it more and more.

Now I am waiting for a S-70 to come...

Here you have a picture:

[IMG:426:576]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guild/Guild_red.jpg[/img]

The Guilds of Grot said:

Well this sounds like a great way to lure people to my web site.

You can find my story here;

http://guildsofgrot.com/history.html

Click to expand...

LOL....I didn't get to read your story. The security system here at work flatly refuses to let me access your site.

I guess I will have to check that out from home.

I started to learn to play when I was a freshman in high school in 1974. My teacher had a Guild dreadnaught (D40?) that I thought was real cool. I then became a John Denver fan, so I guess there was really no choice as to what make of acoustic guitar I would own. I really loved Denver's 12 string sound but an F512 was a bit out of the econimic range of a teenager. I scraped my pennies and nickles together, mowed lots of the nieghborhood lawns and got bought a '71 F112 from the music store where I was also taking my lessons. My instructor was pissed "you can learn classical scales on a 12 string..." a few years later after I mowed a few hundred more lawns (at $5 a lawn) I bought the F112's mate - a 1975 F30.

I still have both. The F112 needs a neck reset and is pretty much unplayable, but the F30 is still a sweet little axe.

...and I never did learn those nasty boring "classical scales".

Picker,

I'd like to see some shots of the GF55 sometime!

West

......well, if you have a magnifying glass or a BIG monitor, its the one on the right on my avatar..... :lol:

Here's a bigger version:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b388/ ... guilds.jpg

IMG]http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b388/earlknoob_/bigguilds.jpg[/IMG]

I bought my first Guild in '66. It's a Hoboken F-212. I still love to play it.

HoboKen

I thought your DV72 was your first, from the Vietnamese guy that owned the Philly restaraunt? I get so confused :shock: . :lol:

West

West R Lee said:

I thought your DV72 was your first, from the Vietnamese guy that owned the Philly restaraunt? I get so confused :shock: . :lol:

West

Click to expand...

They say that it is short term memory that's the first to go....

Na, pretty cool story about how Ken ended up with that DV72. If we're lucky, maybe he'll share it with us.

West

My first guitar was a Stella plywood $20 special. The second was a Harmony Golden Soverign and the third was a Gibson 12-string.

The DV-72 was my first Guild 6-string. Back in the 60's I had the Hoboken F-212, my Kalamazoo 6-string Epi.Texan (Mahogany) and the 6-string Martin D-35 (Rosewood), that I just got back after thirty-six years.

I traded my small body Gibson 12-string in on the F-212 back then.

HoboKen

So Ken, you want to share your DV72 story with us and tell us what had happened to your previous guitar?

West

I believe I posted it somewhere here in the past. But to do the Reader's Digest version, here goes.......

A friend knows I'm looking for a used roswood D-28 or something like that I can afford and gets me into the big city saying he needs help on a project. (at that time all I had was the Mahogany Epi. Texan and the Mahogany Guild F-212) He takes me to this Vietnamese Resturant for a late lunch and it seems he is well know to the staff. (He had invested money to help the family start the restaurant I find out later) Anyway when I say that I have not had a full Vietnamese dinner in many a year...since my DaNang TDY days to the owner, he asks me what I did there. It seems our old Squadron there had some how helped out his family and made it possible for them to come to the USA.
Even though I was not there when they did this, he insists that my dinner is on him. Then, my friend takes me to a music shop blocks away where the restaurant's brother (I found that out later also) asks me if I am who I am and when I say yes, he says "Come with me." We go down into a large basement guitar vault. He pulls down two new guitar cases. In one is a '95 Martin D-41. In the other the '93 Guild DV-72 Limited. Neither had ever been sold...they are "Factory War-an-tee New!" He asks which one do I like. I say both are nice, but way out of my price range. He asks how much I have to spend. I say "$1,100 tax, title, & plates out the door." He says to pick one, its mine for $1,100. This was late 1996. I played the Martin and the Guild....both were nice looking, but, the '93 Westerly Guild DV-72 Limited Edition was breathtaking in tone, volume, balance,....you name it over the Martin. It truly was....and is. I never once regretted that choice that day.

HoboKen

Thank you sir, I really like that story. Lost the Epiphone in a rocket attack didn't you Ken?

West