M-20 issue and how Guild Treated Me

adorshki

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Teething problems for a new factory.
OK I'll calm down and hope that's true, but we're a year in already, aren't we?
And 2 flawed instruments in a row to the same customer, presumably from different batches?
What are the odds, unless the new one is somebody else's return and that's why it became available quicker than anticipated?
Which would actually be adding insult to injury.
OK I'll shut up now.
 
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jmascis

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OK I'll calm down and hope that's true, but we're a year in already, aren't we?
And 2 flawed instruments in a row to the same customer, presumably from different batches?
What are the odds, unless the new one is somebody else's return and that's why it became available quicker than anticipated?
Which would actually be adding insult to injury.
OK I'll shut up now.

That might be the case, because they said they had this one made for another dealer and were instead routing it to me. I asked them not to rush it so as to get things right, and this is what they wrote: "Your replacement will be pulled from another order, so the quality will not be compromised in any way."

The customer service rep also told me he looked over it after QC and it was good to go. So they missed the issues twice. Meanwhile, I don't have a ton of experience with acoustics, yet I noticed the problems the first night I sat down with it for any period of time.

My final takeaway is this: The new M-20s do sound good, but I simply can't trust their build quality.

And I agree with you, that even if I'm willing to pay more for high quality, it is hard to find. It's truly bizarre. It's like USA guitars are mean-reverting toward China builds.
 

refret

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NO that's not normal and first suspicion is that hole was not routed at the correct angle.




Same thing you do, either not completely glued to top or not properly profiled to match the top radius, leaving that edge a little bit high.

After trying to reassure you about Cordoba, I have to say this is just getting really depressing.
In fact it's even starting to p--s me off.


It's part of what's p--ssing me off.
Quality's getting shoddier and shoddier in everything and young folks just coming into the market have nothing to compare it to, so they just think that's the way it is and always has been, so the makers just keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Even more irritating is the lack of choice in so many segments, you can't buy good quality even if you wanted to pay more for it.


I remember reading somewhere that in Westerly each station reviewed the work of the preceding station and sent stuff back for rework if needed.
They were small and intimate enough to be able to do that, but the "Big Guys" couldn't.
It's one of those intangibles that made the guitars feel like they actually had a soul instead of having been turned on a lathe with a million other table legs.
I've said before that for the first couple of months I used to just eyeball my D25 for a few minutes after practice, at first looking for flaws, and pretty quickly just to drink in the sheer quality of workmanship: Perfectly joined seams everywhere, perfectly beveled fret-ends, not even a drop of glue squeeze from the kerfing inside the guitar.
When you see such care taken even inside the guitar you know it was built by true craftsmen.
And now they ship out guitars with crooked bridge pins?
SHAME ON YOU, CORDOBA!!!!!
Yup, the Guild acoustics that came out of Westerly and Hoboken were just as clean on the inside as outside, even as clean, maybe cleaner than Martins. (Unfortunately, Gibsons were always a mess on the inside).
 

adorshki

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And I agree with you, that even if I'm willing to pay more for high quality, it is hard to find. It's truly bizarre. It's like USA guitars are mean-reverting toward China builds.
Kinda makes it hard to send a message to a maker by giving your dollar to somebody else.
And it torques me greatly.
 

davismanLV

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My new Breedlove is FLAWLESS!! Inside and out. Perfectly executed. So, it can be done, just maybe not by Guild at this time..... kinda sad. Growing pains do happen but you gotta tighten those things up quickly before you ruin your reputation. The only thing harder than getting a customer, is getting one BACK after you've disappointed or screwed with them.
 

geoguy

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I recall Chris Seeger telling me awhile ago, that most New Hartford guitars needed some re-work before they went out the door.

My understanding (or maybe my assumption) was that he was handling those touch-ups/repairs.

Sounds like Guild could use a guy like Chris at Oxnard.
 

adorshki

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I recall Chris Seeger telling me awhile ago, that most New Hartford guitars needed some re-work before they went out the door.

My understanding (or maybe my assumption) was that he was handling those touch-ups/repairs.

Sounds like Guild could use a guy like Chris at Oxnard.

Bouncing back to the "Let's try to keep a balanced perspective" end of the spectrum, I can't remember if we've seen similar complaints about the D20's or or M40's or D40's, all of which use the catalyzed varnish finish.
I never did find out if it's actually a "poly" type finish that's extremely difficult to rework if needed (but I bet now it is, because the term "catalyzed" pretty much implies that: it hardens by catalyzation and that's not a reversible process by using a solvent like NCL is)
It could be one reason they pass QC, that they simply can't afford to hold back or rework the flaws.
Not that it excuses anything.
UP through New Hartford Guild was NCL all the time*** so even if a piece did need rework after finishing, touch-up wasn't a major difficulty.
The higher-ends are going to be NCL, so just keeping my fingers crossed they get their game into gear by the time they start building those puppies or it's gonna finally be be "game over".
*** with only one exception I ever remember hearing about, one of the "FS" series solid-body acoustic-electrics.
 

fronobulax

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OK I'll calm down and hope that's true, but we're a year in already, aren't we?

I'm thinking it took a couple of years before folks here had seen enough out of New Hartford to stop worrying/complaining about quality issues. That said, my sense is that Oxnard is having a bit more difficulty. Perhaps that is the difference between adding a new line to an existing (and staffed) factory vs. building and staffing from scratch. If the 10,000 hour rule holds we need to give Oxnard five years but I don't think we or Guild want to wait that long.
 

fronobulax

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It's like USA guitars are mean-reverting toward China builds.

Could you clarify before I jump to a wrong conclusion and wield the Moderator Hammer?

Are you saying that the Westerly Collection is having the same kind of "it should not have left the factory" issues similar to what Oxnard may be having with M-20's and the Newark Street line may be having with some lines?

Perhaps your thought could have been captured by saying "the average quality of an Oxnard build seems to be trending towards the average quality build for an instrument costing 1/3 to 1/2 as much"?

Political discussions are generally discouraged at LTG and the definition of political is arbitrary, capricious and depends on what a Moderator had for breakfast. The perceived motivation for (and justification of) remarks about Chinese Guilds makes a difference in my decisions.
 

dreadnut

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"I remember reading somewhere that in Westerly each station reviewed the work of the preceding station and sent stuff back for rework if needed."

Send enough of them back to the previous workstation and they'll quit trying to pass that crap along down the line!

But in reality, "rework" is a dirty word in the manufacturing business. Defects? Stop the presses and fix the manufacturing processes before producing more of them! Even if they are hand-built, there are ways to insure process repeatability.

Don't get me started...
 

jmascis

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Perhaps your thought could have been captured by saying "the average quality of an Oxnard build seems to be trending towards the average quality build for an instrument costing 1/3 to 1/2 as much"?

This is exactly what I was getting at. Don't ban me over that. I have no interest in politics.
 

adorshki

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This is exactly what I was getting at. Don't ban me over that. I have no interest in politics.
Don't worry too much, you have to work pretty hard to get banned around here, and I'm sure Frono's taking your "perceived motivation" into account.
He's just letting you know there are boundary lines.
With "politics" it usually results in a thread getting de-materialized.
As you confirmed, you have no interest in politics.
Personally I love 'em to death but I got tired of seeing my keenly cynical and painstakingly constructed observations vanish into thin air, overnight.
:friendly_wink:
 

adorshki

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It's cool stuff. The NH attention to detail looks very good.

Right. Somehow through all the years and locations that core value seemed to remain in place and be at least one critical element of what made Guild's sound unique, and price-to-value ratio extremely high.
My fear is that that core value may fall by the wayside, if it hasn't already.
I'd prefer to stay in the "wait and see camp" for a while longer.
I nominate Frono to monitor the 10,000 hour timer, though.
 

bobouz

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Over on the Martin forum, there are a lot of folks concerned about Martin's slipping quality in a recent thread. Just about every builder seems to have problems from time to time, and there can be some cycles that are more problematic than others.

But imho, in the case of the new Oxnard start-up, they need to knock it out of the park at the front end in order to gain a serious foothold in the acoustic market. Demand & dealer orders will hopefully follow, but only if people are chatting about the stellar tone & quality of these new California Guilds.

Otherwise, the market will happily cruise along with both the good & bad offerings from all the familiar players.
 
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jmascis

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I'm relatively new to Guilds, but I did own a DV-52 for a few weeks (UPS cracked it, yet I played it for a while) and loved it, owned an HD-28, and have owned and played many nice electrics over the years. So I know a little about guitars, in general, and this Cordoba purchase feels like the Gretsch/Baldwin years (mismatch from the start and terrible guitars) or Fender/CBS (not bad, but a big dip).

The M-20 had a nice tone, very nice tuners, and a perfect neck angle. Those are the positives I can say about it. The main problems were finish and attention to details. Sloppy glue jobs, imperfections in finish, tuning pegs miss cut, etc. Compared to that DV-52 the build quality was night and day. I know they are two different beasts, but just little things that added up. At 1k maybe, but at 1.4k no.
 
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SFIV1967

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I never did find out if it's actually a "poly" type finish.
Well, certainly not NCL... That was my take on the issue: (From a previous discussion):

"Ren said, he saved "$1000" for a laquer job on those new models by using a "catalyzed varnish finish". Not sure if a real NCL spray job would really add $1000 however...
But he didn't say it is the first time he worked with such "catalyzed varnish finish", he said he didn't use it since the days of the Flatiron Mandolins in Bozeman/MT 30 years ago! So it's an old finish indeed!
It might be the same two-part catalyzed coating named "Fullerplast" (Fuller for Fuller O'Brien, the products creator) which Fender used since 1963. Flatiron Mandolins used it as well in the 80ies I read, that is how I came to that idea and Ren mentions Flatiron 30 years ago... A Fullerplast datasheet from 2007 can be seen here:
http://portal.gemini-coatings.com/assets/pdf_pds/353-00,353-02,353-50.pdf "

Fullerplast is now owned by Van-Dee: http://www.van-dee.com/page-2-catalog-page.html

Again, this is pure speculation from my side what it could be.

Ralf
 
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dreadnut

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I went to Elderly Instruments today and played a bunch of different guitars, which is pretty much required when you go in there.

They didn't have any Oxnard Guilds, only "Westerly Collection."

I fondled a D-120CE for awhile, and I must say, I was impressed. Very lively sounding, reminded me of my D-25M, and just about as heavy. I looked it over particularly closely considering the discussion we're having here. It was really nice, smooth, beautiful finish, not a single flaw I could see. If I had $899 lying around, I might have brought it home. Especially when comparing it to what you get in a similarly priced guitar from "the other guys."

UPDATE: Cost $100 less on line.
 
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