just got back from Frankfurt Musik messe and....

12stringdh · Apr 16, 2015

Guild - Schmild - Let's face it, it's over. Fender killed it the minute they bought it, schlepping it all over the country, slashing jobs and livelihoods in the pursuit of profit, and then dumped it onto another Californian Co. - a place with such a tradition of acoustic guitar making right? whose first task is to re-do the Chinese range. It's over, forget it,
enjoy your old guitars, that's all there is now. My first and probably my last post.

adorshki · Apr 16, 2015

jcwu said:
Yikes. This can't be good. Cordoba, see what mass confusion you are starting to cause??

ALthough they may be being launched in Europe, I'm sure the US built instruments will find their way here to the US eventually.
:tongue-new:

adorshki · Apr 16, 2015

davismanLV said:
Why didn't they run it by us first?

They didn't want to see 50 pages of posts become a smoking pile of ashes in a single weekend?

txbumper57 · Apr 16, 2015

From the Pamphlet that is posted for the "Westerly Collection" it looks like All chinese made guitars are going to have the time Honored Chesterfield Logo and from the Pamphlet posted of the new American series guitars, it looks like they will now have the G shield logo exclusively. I agree that they should have named it after the Street the Westerly facility was on like the Newark St. Series guitars. That would have cut down on confusion and still paid homage to the Westerly years. I don't know who took over there marketing, but I think it is safe to say they are not a Guild Person. I know it is just a name of a Guitar Series but I think it Alienates a large part of the Guild community, or at least rubs them the wrong way, which is not the way you want to start a relationship with your loyal fan base. Hopefully the quality of the Builds on the "Westerly Collection" will be good but I personally don't care for the name one bit.

SFIV1967 · Apr 16, 2015

Maybe that's the reason why they have not posted anything on the Guild webpage or even the Guild Facebook page about that "Westerly Collection" yet!
They might read our comments and reconsider the name! (Well that's maybe too much hope...).

Regarding street pricing: Bax shop offers them all in Euro already (UVP in small letters is the official list price and the bigger price is their sales price, incl 19% VAT) and the links show also the official stock photos of the real guitars already:

Guild M-120 Natural
Guild M-120 Cherry Red
Guild M-120E Natural
Guild M-120E Cherry Red
Guild D-120 Natural
Guild D-120 Cherry Red
Guild D-120E Natural
Guild D-120CE Natural
Guild D-120CE Cherry Red
Guild D-1212 Natural
Guild D-1212E Natural

Guild M-140 Natural
Guild M-140E Natural
Guild OM-140 Natural
Guild OM-140 Sunburst
Guild OM-140CE Natural
Guild OM-140CE Sunburst
Guild D-140 Natural
Guild D-140 Sunburst
Guild D-140CE Natural
Guild D-140CE Sunburst
Guild B-140E Natural

Guild OM-150 Natural
Guild OM-150CE Natural
Guild D-150 Natural
Guild D-150L Natural
Guild D-150CE Natural
Guild F-150 Natural
Guild F-150CE Natural
Guild F-1512 Natural
Guild F-1512E Natural

I don't even see a "Made in China" on the label:

Ralf

txbumper57 · Apr 16, 2015

I also noticed that the New GAD series guitars have the old New Hartford American Standard series appointments. No Block inlays or anything fancy. Just an observation. I am going to continue to refer to them as the "New GAD Series". No matter how well built they are, A Guitar not made in Westerly doesn't deserve the Westerly name in my opinion.

jcwu · Apr 16, 2015

I can picture how this naming decision was made....

"Hey, did you notice, the LTG forum has been a little quiet lately? There hasn't been much talk lately about the new factory or new guitars coming down the pipeline."
"Hmm, how about we throw them a live one?"
"What could possibly get the forum lit up on fire?"

And here we are.

adorshki · Apr 16, 2015

SFIV1967 said:
I don't even see a "Made in China" on the label:

I believe there's something in US trade regs that says country of origin has to be on there somewhere (the instrument at least, if not the label). And, that's assuming these are destined to be sold in the US.
Maybe there's something they're not telling us yet?
Or maybe it's just the ol' Photoshop magic at work?
One thing I'll say in their favor, as opposed to Walter's comment about model numbering confusion, I think it's wonderfully clear.
The key at the beginning of the catalog is very easy to interpret: 4 body styles, 3 possible combinations of top and body oods.
Bottom line: they got us talkin'. (or Walter did, anyway. :biggrin-new

Walter Broes · Apr 16, 2015

adorshki said:
One thing I'll say in their favor, as opposed to Walter's comment about model numbering confusion, I think it's wonderfully clear.
The key at the beginning of the catalog is very easy to interpret: 4 body styles, 3 possible combinations of top and body oods.
[/I]. (or Walter did, anyway. :biggrin-new

For the novice, it is wonderfully clear indeed.

It's just that the Guild guy in me immediately went looking for an F30 and an F40 in there, and pretty much went "huh? OM? They're building Martin copies with a Guild headstock now?"

adorshki · Apr 16, 2015

Walter Broes said:
For the novice, it is wonderfully clear indeed.
It's just that the Guild guy in me immediately went looking for an F30 and an F40 in there, and pretty much went "huh? OM? They're building Martin copies with a Guild headstock now?"

I suppose you're right. It probably would cut down on the number of folks who join so they can ask what the difference is between a D40 and a D50.....:biggrin-new:

walrus · Apr 16, 2015

Came to this party late, I don't like it. As has been said already, from a marketing point of view, it's just a bad idea. What does "I have a Westerly Guild" mean now?

And, I hate to say it, but if in fact there's no "made in China" label, it's a bit dishonest.

walrus

bluesypicky · Apr 16, 2015

They all do it.... haven't heard of the new "Ferrari Collection" by Ford?

Christopher Cozad · Apr 16, 2015

bluesypicky said:
T...haven't heard of the new "Ferrari Collection" by Ford?

Complete with phone from GPT...J'ai pete

JohnW63 · Apr 16, 2015

They could have gone with something like "Westerly tribute series" or something like that.

That's what G&L guitars did for their off shore line.

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE that they are going for an all solid wood design, if I read the posts correctly, and maybe they really need to differentiate that from the old GAD and 3 digit line, but... it will confuse people when we need to explain there is a DIFFERENCE between guitars MADE in Westerly and guitars CALLED Westerly.

Bottom line, I'm really glad we can still talk about Guilds being made ANYWHERE and I will handle some confusion if it comes with quality stuff ALSO being made by a company here in the US that really seems to care about making and selling the Guild brand.

Default · Apr 17, 2015

Making and selling maybe, but what about supporting?

Geotrio · Apr 17, 2015

One of the biggest mistakes Ovation ever made was to confuse their offshore models with the original USA versions. There needs to be a clear line in the sand, if not the brand gets watered down, simple as that.

dreamics · Apr 17, 2015

I'm quite a newbie here but I know enough about this brand and its history to see what a HUGE marketing mistake it is! I'm shoked.
IF there were to be no more USA-built Guilds, I could at least UNDERSTAND such a move (and would still find it curious, if not dishonest, but maybe sometimes slightly dishonest marketing can be good marketing). But the Westerly tradition is still alive in the USA, USA production is not the past, so I don't even begin to understand this choice.

As it has already been said here, probably the most part of the target aimed with this new GAD series don't know what Westerly means, so what's the point to irritate those who know, and who are the brands best representatives? When I bought my GAD25 several years ago, I didn't know anything about Westerly (I even thought Guild's origin was English, because somebody stupidly told me that :redface-new

IMHO, the only good idea here was to change this awful "GAD" acronym, and the "1XX" naming was a good start.

Do you know if they read LTG, or should somebody invite them friendly to look at what's been said here? It's not necessarily too late...

dreamics · Apr 17, 2015

JohnW63 said:
Don't get me wrong, I LIKE that they are going for an all solid wood design, if I read the posts correctly, and maybe they really need to differentiate that from the old GAD and 3 digit line, but... it will confuse people when we need to explain there is a DIFFERENCE between guitars MADE in Westerly and guitars CALLED Westerly.

GAD and GAD "1XX" were already all-solid wood anyway, if I'm not mistaken...

SFIV1967 · Apr 17, 2015

dreamics said:
GAD and GAD "1XX" were already all-solid wood anyway, if I'm not mistaken...

That's correct, both former GAD series were always all solid wood from when it started mid of the 2000's.
Ralf

fronobulax · Apr 17, 2015

12stringdh said:
Guild - Schmild - Let's face it, it's over. Fender killed it the minute they bought it, schlepping it all over the country, slashing jobs and livelihoods in the pursuit of profit, and then dumped it onto another Californian Co. - a place with such a tradition of acoustic guitar making right? whose first task is to re-do the Chinese range. It's over, forget it,
enjoy your old guitars, that's all there is now. My first and probably my last post.

I approved the post but you are certainly acting more like a Troll than someone who wants to contribute in any positive way. I think a couple of your statements are ambiguous enough that you may not have your facts correct and your opinion that Fender killed Guild seems to belittle the contribution of the New Hartford made instruments to the brand, among other things.

But welcome anyway.

just got back from Frankfurt Musik messe and....

12stringdh

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