D55 Date by serial number?
- Thread starter Nizzle
- Start date
chazmo
Super Moderator
What a gorgeous sunburst. Welcome to LTG, Nizzle.
Do you know if that's "antique" or "iced tea" ?
Do you know if that's "antique" or "iced tea" ?
hansmoust
Enlightened Member
Hello Nizzle,
Welcome! The serial number prefix is CV and your Guild D-55 was completed during the year 2002.
Hope you will enjoy the guitar!
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
AoxoA
Junior Member
I wonder why this Dating_Your_Guild pdf doesn't have the CV code?
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hansmoust
Enlightened Member
Because that particular pdf does not contain any serial number information for Guild guitars that were made from 1998 up till 2005.
For the 'why' you need to ask somebody else.
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
chazmo
Super Moderator
It doesn't answer "why?," but it kinda' does: 
No idea!
Just got it and, man does it play and sound like a champ. I was concerned about the lore of the Corona builds, but after seeing it and then, of course, playing and hearing it - Wow. It's just perfect and in superb condition. Very lucky.
-t
Thank you!
AoxoA
Junior Member
It doesn't answer "why?," but it kinda' does:
:laughing:
Taylor Martin Guild
Senior Member
From what I have read, Corona made great Guilds in the standard line. They experimented with some new ideas on other models that didn't work out so well.
There will be buyers that will try to offer less money for a Corona built Guild.
But they will still buy them.
adorshki
Reverential Member
TM, I thinking you're thinking of the "Contemporary Series" with the bolt-on necks, but those were Tacoma-era designs.
@ Nizzle: Welcome aboard!
Corona just got a bad rep primarily from all the inventory that was liquidated at closure without warranty, and there were some finish blem problems early on too, but all those guitars can be identified by marking either as "Used" or with a barcode sticker from the outfit that Fender liquidated a lot of 'em through.
For a while Coronas had the highest incidence of "underwhelmed" new owner reports here, but the last few new owners of "A" stock have been very happy indeed.
Makes me think of something ex Fender CEO Larry Thomas said in an interview with Vintage Guitar a few years back ,that in his opinion most acoustics hit a real "sweet spot" at about 10-15 years old.
I normally wouldn't go along with that, I think it's more about how much they've been played, but Coronas are just hitting that age and sure enough I see fewer dissatisfaction reports. (In fact none in the last couple of years, I think)
Even at that, the dissatisfaction level was still pretty low, just the highest for the Guild brand out of all the factories.
Even my Corona D40 was the sonic runt in the litter for several years and just finally seemed to blossom a couple of years back, although that also happened to coincide with the time it finally got over 200 hours of play time, which was my original measure of how long it takes a Guild to really open up, anyway.
I forgot to check my 2001 Fender Frontline catalog last night, but pretty sure that's either "Antique" or "Tobacco".
"Iced Tea" has more red and a lighter outside edge like the older '80's 'bursts, and wasn't introduced until Tacoma anyway.
They only offered "Antique", Tobacco", and "Autumn" 'bursts in Corona, but not sure if all 3 were available on D55's.
That catalog doesn't say.
The '01 Westerly price list (last one before move to Corona) only shows "Antique" and "Natural" on D55s, but Corona did put in a brand new finishing booth so they may have added colors.
On my tube it really looks like "Tobacco" to me, being only yellow and brown, but "Antique" is really close too..
No way to tell for sure without the original tag from Guild with their part number on it, the last 3 digits of that were the color code.