I recently was given a Peregrine by the widow of a dear friend of mine who passed away about a year and a half ago. He didn't play this guitar out a lot, but I have performed with him while he was using it. It is serial number 102401 00. I will post photos once I figure out how to do that on here. lol I have contacted Guild, and they told me it was a Peregrine, but didn't offer much more than that. On the back of the pegged it just says "Guild Custom Shop USA" and then the serial number. It's a red one with abalone binding on the body. It also has a Martin ThinLine Gold Plus pickup system in it, and it does sound great. The battery box had been melted while soldering and was shorting out intermittently so I replaced it with the same one. I'm sure he bought it here in Florida.
It now plays and sounds great. This guitar has immense sentimental memory for me, but I will play it when I'm playing with his band for sure.
Any info you can give me would be appreciated. Does the serial number have any correlation to manufacture date? Thanks!
HI "Sunny", welcome aboard!
It's not surprising that current owners couldn't give you more info about that guitar, they didn't acquire any records older than those from New Hartford from about '09-'14, and after all have no real vested interest in supporting the vintage instruments since they didn't take on any warranty obligations beyond New Hartford -built guitars.
Don't know if Custom Shop s/n's are "keyed" for decoding to build date, but our member Hans Moust can most likely nail it down as he did earlier in this thread.
He prefers to be contacted at his website:
http://www.guitarchives.nl/guitarsgalore/
I
can tell you that Guild's "Custom Shop USA" was in Nashville, and was opened up in late '96 shortly after Fender bought Guild in Westerly RI, but don't recall when it actually closed.
Don't think it was later than '04, though, when Fender closed/moved Guild from Corona after buying Tacoma Guitars.
(Fender moved Guild from Westerly to Corona CA in late '01 but Guild's Custom Shop is not to be confused with Fender's in Corona. Some Guild electrics were built there but those [and only those] got actual Fender Custom Shop headstock ID's)
Anyway, point is that while Westerly's quality is still very highly regarded in the market, Nashville's standards were even a cut or more above that.
Here's a link to a site that has some articles with more background about Guild in that era:
http://www.westerlyguildguitars.com/articles/articles.htm
PS your first few posts get vetted by moderators before they'll start showing up in real time so don't "fret" if they're not showing up right away.