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.
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.