Thank you Al
I will have a look into the Corona story to see what I can find.
I have noticed that a few tacoma D55 owners have reported the same issue over time. The Tacoma lacquer seems a little thicker than other guitars I own/have owned, and given the binding design on the necks, with the side of the binding lacquered and the top, as a continuation of the ebony board, unlacquered I do wonder if this is a vulnerability in the design.
It's occurring to me that since a 'burst is actually achieved with varying the spray density of at least one of the pigments, you may need to be looking for the identity of one of those, I assume the darkest one.
Mr. Mason sounds like the kind of fellow who knows his way around these things and I suspect he'll be able to perform an acceptable blend with material;s he has access to.
Re lacquer thickness at Tacoma, haven't heard about that being a "problem" here, but certainly not out of the question, might even have ts roots in Corona.
Fender built a new spray booth in Corona to be able to apply the nitro to the Guild acoustics and there were early reports of finish problems, and some seconds were let out as "Finish Blems".
My D40, about a "mid" Corona era, has the smoothest and best gloss of all 3 but it's definitely thicker than the 2 late Westerlys.
Never seen any indication about whether that booth was moved to Tacoma like some of the other Guild tooling, but it could be easily set up to run other finishes and could have been used for the electrics, so suspect Fender kept it in Corona.
But they may have transferred the "thick finish" philosophy up to Tacoma if not the booth.
The last paint codes I can post here are in the '01 Westerly price list, way down at the bottom.
I know some of the colors especially for electrics, are actually "Fender" colors, as the electrics were being produced in Corona before the acoustics and they continued after the "official" relocation in '02.
Don't know if they changed the "Antique 'burst" pigments in Coroan but foggy memory says teh colors seem the same on samples in photos I've seen here, anyway it might give a starting point:
http://westerlyguildguitars.com/files/Guild2001.pdf
Antique Burst is code "37"
One 'burst that
was initiated in Tacoma was the "Iced Tea 'burst" which was yellower/redder than the Antique, I actually like it a little better, but it would be identified as "ITB" after the model number on the label, just to be sure.
Here's another interesting tidbit;
Fender's color code chart, and after all these years, code 37 is still "Antique Burst":
https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/214034783-Instrument-Finish-Color-Chart
Mr Mason might be able to find out something after all, if he knows somebody at Fender.