1967 F20 - Hoboken or Westerly ?

highwayman

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I know the topic Hoboken or Westerly has been a thread on LTG many times in the past and probably will remain one. I have noticed that a 1968 F-212 is also being discussed here for the same reason right now. Sorry, if I ride this horse here, too.

A friend of mine in England owns a 1967 F20 AB, SN AG 2228, with a Hoboken tag. Can it be a Hoboken? He is not a LTG member (the F20 is his only Guild, poor guy!:) but I offered him to ask this question to you experts. Are there any criteria at all to decide whether it can be a Hoboken after 1966 or is it really a case-by-case thing?

Thank you for your insights!

Thomas
 

adorshki

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I know the topic Hoboken or Westerly has been a thread on LTG many times in the past and probably will remain one. I have noticed that a 1968 F-212 is also being discussed here for the same reason right now. Sorry, if I ride this horse here, too.
A friend of mine in England owns a 1967 F20 AB, SN AG 2228, with a Hoboken tag. Can it be a Hoboken?
The "short answer" is "YES it's possible for 1967 instrument to be a Hoboken-built", because both locations were running concurrently for a couple of years.
The impression I get from the posts here over the years is that electric and high-end production like 12-strings were the last to be moved to Westerly, whereas Westerly appears to have started out with the "easy builds" to gain experience before moving up the model ladder..
I do think an F20 is a likely candidate for being a Westerly in '67, because it's the cousin of the M20, which were the first instruments to come out of Westerly, in '67.
BUT that's just idle speculation.
I suspect our member Han Moust could tell you where it was actually built from the serial number.
He's got all the old production records he could find, and if he doesn't see this post pretty quickly you can contact him here:
http://www.guitarchives.nl/guitarsgalore/
If it wasn't mentioned in that F212 thread, the issue is that Hoboken labels were used for the first few years of Westerly production.
My guess is that it was an example of Guild founder Al Dronge's reported reluctance to throw away any perfectly usable materials.
But there was also an interim label in the early-to-mid- '70's that only said "USA", before Westerly finally appeared on the labels.
 

hansmoust

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A friend of mine in England owns a 1967 F20 AB, SN AG 2228, with a Hoboken tag. Can it be a Hoboken?

Hello Thomas,

Yes, that particular F-20 was completed in Hoboken, NJ.

By the way, I assume that the actual model designation that is written on the label is not F-20 AB, right?

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
 

mavuser

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Hello Thomas,

Yes, that particular F-20 was completed in Hoboken, NJ.

By the way, I assume that the actual model designation that is written on the label is not F-20 AB, right?

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl


could it say “SB” Hans? the handwriting on some of those Hoboken labels is questionable.
 

highwayman

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Sorry, but first of all I think I have to apologize to you all. "AB" was used by me as an abbreviation to avoid to write "Sunburst", it was not rpt not used in the SN of the guitar I mentioned!

But in the meantime I have received more information from my English friend on the issue which could be helpful for our thread here, talking about three F20s now:

Guitar I: I thought the AG2228 was his guitar, but it is not, but is another F20 from 67 (in sunburst finish!). The tag in that guitar said F20 SB, AG2228. So "SB" was used then.
>
> Guitar II : This is an F20 that currently is/was for sale on eBay UK; it is said to be from 1966, and the label on that one says F20 NT, AG1097.
>
> Guitar III: This is my friend's F20: probably 1965, he thinks, label says F20 NT, SN is 40446. I also think it is a 1965 F20, but the Guild info on dating the guitars is not 100% clear to me for this year.
>
> All three labels say Hoboken. But: On the tag of Guitar III, it says "Hoboken, New Jersey", on the tags of the two others it says "Hoboken, New Jersey, USA".

>
> Of general interest to all of us is understanding how to identify whether a guitar was made in Hoboken or Westerly, given that the label might be misleading and there appears to be no clear cut off date which could be identified from the serial number. If this is so, then identifying a production location of a guitar would need a case-by-case approach, as I have suggested in my initial post.

Sincerely,

Thomas
 
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