Consistency

fronobulax

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I see a lot of questions and comments from new/less frequent contributors that are based on an assumption that Guild specs and the associated model numbers were pretty consistent across the years. We know that is not true but it makes me wonder - are other manufacturers consistent? If I am looking (for example) for a Martin D-28 because it has the specs I want, do I have to worry about the year? Gibson? Taylor? Any other "big" manufacturer that I can't recall with my failing memory?

I'm guessing this is more about acoustics since most of the electric examples I can think of (Fender, Gibson) tend to tweak the model name just a bit when the spec changes.

Thanks.
 

Westerly Wood

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Martin really struggled in the 1970s. Lots of neck resets, they changed the bridge plate to a harder wood which killed the tone, Japan was starting to copy their dreads.

Gibson has always been wildly inconsistent. Their 60s J45 was a square shouldered dread, and the neck was a baseball bat. Stay away from them.

Taylor has been ever consistent, but chaotic in their constant changing to devise some new bracing pattern that actually sounds good.

For me, Guild is the only brand to be, well, consistently interesting...and for the US models, the even tone and volume across all strings is a plus. At least for Westerly and Hoboken, but I would imagine the same for NH.
 

SFIV1967

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I guess Martin D-28 is a good example as there were many versions with changed specs over the years...
Ralf
 

GAD

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What I would say is pretty consistent with Guild is the quality, not the specs.

I think any product evolves over the years. I can tell you that when I was into Taylors (2008 or so) I loved their guitars, but a few years back they did a major overhaul of pretty much every model and now they do nothing for me.

Every Gibson Custom Shop guitar I've owned has been great, but the Les Paul guys will go full-on Rain Man about specs that have changed over the years, most of which I just don't care about. That's funny to me because the Les Paul Historic Reissues are supposed to be accurate copies of the representative year's guitar, yet every modern year the specs on the Historics change. Some years are more accurate than others, and of course some years have better wood than others.

Guild can't even be consistent with their model names. :laughing:
 

Grassdog

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I see a lot of questions and comments from new/less frequent contributors that are based on an assumption that Guild specs and the associated model numbers were pretty consistent across the years. We know that is not true but it makes me wonder - are other manufacturers consistent? If I am looking (for example) for a Martin D-28 because it has the specs I want, do I have to worry about the year? Gibson? Taylor? Any other "big" manufacturer that I can't recall with my failing memory?

I'm guessing this is more about acoustics since most of the electric examples I can think of (Fender, Gibson) tend to tweak the model name just a bit when the spec changes.

Thanks.

I would think there is some level of inconsistency in specs among the other major players (less so with Martin IMHO), but not to the extent that we see with Guild. I like to think it's because Guild, being a smaller player, was more creative and willing to experiment but maybe it was just due to a lack of firm policy in such matters. We know that Guild's record keeping was remarkably inconsistent at times, so it wouldn't surprise me if standard operating procedures weren't rigidly enforced. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing. At least it makes things interesting around here.
 

adorshki

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Heathkit never changed their specs.
A spec change required a new model number.
And look what happened to them.
 
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GAD

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Heathkit never changed their specs.
A spec change required a new model number.
And look what happened to them.

Not really a fair comparison, IMO.

First, Heathkit was by engineers for engineers (even amateur), so the spec/model thing makes perfect sense.

Second, Heathkit's demise has more to do with societal change than anything else. It's actually fascinating to me to watch the Maker community embracing the same spirit that made Heathkit work. The Maker community is just more focused on programmable things than they are electrical engineering. I think if there hadn't been a huge gap of "just throw it out and buy a new one" that overtook us all in the '80s and '90s, then Heathkit could still be what they once were if they could have evolved.

The things people are doing today with Raspberry Pis and Arduinos are mind-blowing.
 

Nuuska

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Heathkit never changed their specs.
A spec change required a new model number.
And look what happened to them.


Same with Studer-ReVox - worlds best tape recorders - I am lucky to have been part of them in 1973 & -4. But then digital took over, and now reel-to-reel tape recorders are only used by some recording studios and hifi-aficionados .
 

adorshki

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Not really a fair comparison, IMO.
It was entirely tongue-in-cheek.
:friendly_wink:
First, Heathkit was by engineers for engineers (even amateur), so the spec/model thing makes perfect sense.
Not entirely true.
Heathkit was for hobbyists who took pride in making it themselves, or were willing to "try it" to save some $$ on what would have been very pricey stuff if they bought it ready-made.
The home-entertainment stuff was a MAJOR part of their biz, right up there with short-wave and test equipment which understandably did attract engineers.
Second, Heathkit's demise has more to do with societal change than anything else. It's actually fascinating to me to watch the Maker community embracing the same spirit that made Heathkit work. The Maker community is just more focused on programmable things than they are electrical engineering. I think if there hadn't been a huge gap of "just throw it out and buy a new one" that overtook us all in the '80s and '90s, then Heathkit could still be what they once were if they could have evolved.
Heathkit's real demise can be traced to the rise of surface-mount IC technology: when they started offering kits composed almost entirely of pre-stuffed boards and requiring only chassis assembly and wiring the writing was on the wall.
Remember, I was there behind the counter at the end, listening to customers complain that all the fun had been taken out of building 'em.
That included both the president of the store Heath User Group, an engineer who was involved in creating the Heads-Up Display for Air Force pilots, and the guys who were diehard Heathkit audiophiles and had no interest in engineering but did know how to use a soldering iron.
The other sword-stroke was that under Zenith and the philosophy of making something that would last for more than ten years, the constantly shrinking useful service life of PCs caught owners Zenith with their pants down:
Nobody cared if something lasted for 10 years if it was obsolete in 5, then 3, then 2 years.
The rise of the pre-stuffed boards (competent cheap labor) and even VLSI technology enabled the "THROW IT OUT AND BUY A NEW ONE" model, so there is something to that, but there's no way Heathkit would have been able to compete.
The evolutionary path was a dead-end for build-it-yourselfers.

It's no coincidence that all the Heathkit stuff that's valued in the collector's market is serviceable at the component level and is all in the audio/shortwave/test category.
 

adorshki

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Same with Studer-ReVox - worlds best tape recorders - I am lucky to have been part of them in 1973 & -4. But then digital took over, and now reel-to-reel tape recorders are only used by some recording studios and hifi-aficionados .
Speaking of obsolete, and in an attempt to get this train back on the tracks:
"Acoustic guitars will never be obsolete."
Well, unless they stop making useful strings for 'em maybe.
In fact, same could be said for any acoustic instrument, I think.
So how about the case of Henry Ford who was satisfied that the Model T was everything anybody could want and required no engineering refinements while guys like Walter Chrysler saw constant improvement of the breed as the very essence of the game?
Bothe of 'em paid the price of trying to remain true to a narrow focus, suffering extreme financial difficulties from their failure to consider a market's demand for variety and change.
What ticks me off these days are so-called "improvements" which are often nothing more thanchange for the sake of change.
All too often all you get is a diminution of quality and usefulness, but, "you can throw it away and buy a new one."
Which is likely to be even less useful than what you just threw out because change for the sake of changeis a MAJOR cause of dysfunctional design, the other being a misguided search for economy at the expense of the actual usefulness of the item being engineered:
Cell phones with screens, speakers, and keypads too small to be truly useful, and car windshields that are now canted so far back for the sake of better drag co-efficients that they all suffer dashboard reflections that interfere
with visibility.
I rest my case.
Back to guitars specifically:
Spec changing addresses the issue that there is no one ideal guitar and so different options MUST be offered to address the myriad of user wants and needs.
With Guild in particular spec changing also creates a subtle pressure to buy a model now because you can't be sure it'll be available next year.
 

Quantum Strummer

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Gibson did a lotta tinkering in the '60s, even more than usual for them. Acoustic body shapes, wood thickness and bracing. Electric neck/body joints, pickup mounting schemes and losing the plot (via revised specs & new winding machines) with their full-size humbucker. Nut widths and neck profiles for both. Basic construction quality throughout the decade in my experience is pretty darn good, though, even if attention to the details comes and goes.

I don't think I've ever played a '60s Guild with the kind of detail-sloppiness I see all the time with '60s Gibsons.

-Dave-
 

Westerly Wood

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Gibson did a lotta tinkering in the '60s, even more than usual for them. Acoustic body shapes, wood thickness and bracing. Electric neck/body joints, pickup mounting schemes and losing the plot (via revised specs & new winding machines) with their full-size humbucker. Nut widths and neck profiles for both. Basic construction quality throughout the decade in my experience is pretty darn good, though, even if attention to the details comes and goes.

I don't think I've ever played a '60s Guild with the kind of detail-sloppiness I see all the time with '60s Gibsons.

-Dave-

Guild 60s are some of their best production of all time. I would argue well into early 80s Guild outshined them all. Martin woke up again from their complacency by the end of the 80s. Gibson is a snipe hunt.
 

Grassdog

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Gibson did a lotta tinkering in the '60s, even more than usual for them. Acoustic body shapes, wood thickness and bracing. Electric neck/body joints, pickup mounting schemes and losing the plot (via revised specs & new winding machines) with their full-size humbucker. Nut widths and neck profiles for both. Basic construction quality throughout the decade in my experience is pretty darn good, though, even if attention to the details comes and goes.

I don't think I've ever played a '60s Guild with the kind of detail-sloppiness I see all the time with '60s Gibsons.



-Dave-

Not sure exactly what year Gibson started making acoustics in Bozeman under Ren Ferguson (late 80's - early 90's perhaps) but I have loved almost every guitar I've played that came out of that factory. I don't think that's just a coincidence. I've never even considered buying a Gibson acoustic made before Bozeman for the aforementioned reasons. I could never tell what I was getting.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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For a while Jerry Garcia was gigging mainly with Travis Beans because they all sounded and played exactly alike. Fenders and Gibsons were too unpredictable.

Rainsong is another brand that seems to keep its sound from instrument to instrument.
 

mike1100

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If I am looking (for example) for a Martin D-28 because it has the specs I want, do I have to worry about the year?

My take.......A brand's consistency for a given model can help when searching for a particular sound in mind, but that's about it. After that it's really up to the guitar to meet or exceed the sound a person is looking for.

Here's a video of 3 guitars made around the same time and with the same specs. While very similar, I hear slight differences as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzGzoL0iu_c
 

dreadnut

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Funny how $$$ botique amps are boasting all the old technology - vacuum tubes, point-to-point wiring, hand soldering, through-hole components, etc.

I was the project manager at our factory when we switched from solid state hand assembled circuit boards to surface mount robotic assembly. The quality of our finished circuit boards was a quantum leap up from the hand assembled through-hole boards. Our field failures literally dropped to only a few parts per million.

The consistency of CNC made parts has done the same for the guitar industry - now you can buy a halfway decent starter instrument for under a couple hundred shekels. Of course this only applies to parts. You can build a guitar from inexpensive parts, but a fine hand crafted acoustic instrument requires much more than just CNC parts.

I guess what I'm saying is that new technology and craftsmanship can be a happy marriage if done right. The finished products can be consistently good without being identical.
 

fronobulax

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I would think there is some level of inconsistency in specs among the other major players (less so with Martin IMHO), but not to the extent that we see with Guild. I like to think it's because Guild, being a smaller player, was more creative and willing to experiment but maybe it was just due to a lack of firm policy in such matters. We know that Guild's record keeping was remarkably inconsistent at times, so it wouldn't surprise me if standard operating procedures weren't rigidly enforced. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing. At least it makes things interesting around here.

Thanks. I was focused on model names and the associated specs. Is a USA F30 always orchestra size? (Yes?) Does it always have a 1 11/16" nut? (No!). If I did a similar exercise with other brands would I get similar results, i.e. the model name really doesn't tell us much. My suspicion was that Martin might be better in this regard but I wasn't sure if anyone else was. I'm thinking not. Consistency may have been the wrong choice of word here since I'm interested in the naming and marketing and not the actual instruments. The fact that there is general agreement that there is a "Guild sound" suggests a consistency of production across years and models.
 

fronobulax

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Second, Heathkit's demise has more to do with societal change than anything else.

Did we have this conversation in the Heathkit thread?

I had fun building Heathkits and got many years of use out of them. (Indeed a digital clock is still displaying the correct time in a spare bedroom). But what killed them for me was the cost relative to competing pre-assembled products. As soon as I could look at a kit and save money by buying something already built I was done. DIY is supposed to be cheaper, measurably better in quality and/or personalized/customized. At the end, Heathkit offered none of these for me.
 

adorshki

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I would think there is some level of inconsistency in specs among the other major players (less so with Martin IMHO), but not to the extent that we see with Guild. I like to think it's because Guild, being a smaller player, was more creative and willing to experiment but maybe it was just due to a lack of firm policy in such matters.
Hans mentions in his book that up through the late '60's I think it was, Guild operated more like a custom shop than a production line.
It was nothing to toss together a one-off special either on a whim or to a customer order, in fact we've seen examples even from Pearl street of instruments that look like they started or are even labled as one model and were completed with off-spec details, so variation had been in their DNA since day one.
It's also been alleged that Al Dronge would let no part go unused before its time, or at all, in fact, and that in itself could explain some of the one-offs and the evolutionary rather than "stairstep" nature of Guild model line development.
Experimentation was in their DNA, but so was "Use 'em up until they're gone, boys!"
Anyway, the late '60's also correlates with the move to Westerly where I think they did become more of a factory than a custom shop, but in the last 6 months or so, a couple of members** have noted that the early Westerly/end of Hoboken manufacturing overlap period yielded some anachronistic builds, as in pieces which had construction specs from a particular era but hardware/pickups from another.
Best guess is that unfinished bodies from Hoboken were lost or in storage for a while until finally finished in Westerly.
Starfire basses seem to yield plenty of examples.**
(**Frono and Mavuser please correct me if needed)

We know that Guild's record keeping was remarkably inconsistent at times, so it wouldn't surprise me if standard operating procedures weren't rigidly enforced. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing. At least it makes things interesting around here.
I think the spotty records thing is more a result of loss/damage/intentional disposal during ritual relocations and changes of ownership.
If I interpret Hans' book correctly, the shop foreman or production manager was the guy charged with seeing that procedures were followed or modified, and "IIRC" the turnover in that position was pretty low, at least in the period covered by the book.( EDIT: In fact there were about 5 changes in that position from '53 to'77 if I read correctly, and one manager in particular was apparently not very effective in terms of not being paid attention to by the workers)

Thanks. I was focused on model names and the associated specs. Is a USA F30 always orchestra size? (Yes?) Does it always have a 1 11/16" nut? (No!). If I did a similar exercise with other brands would I get similar results, i.e. the model name really doesn't tell us much. My suspicion was that Martin might be better in this regard but I wasn't sure if anyone else was. I'm thinking not. Consistency may have been the wrong choice of word here since I'm interested in the naming and marketing and not the actual instruments. The fact that there is general agreement that there is a "Guild sound" suggests a consistency of production across years and models.
Over the years I've come to see a "core" line up that is consistent with Guild over its entire history, allowing that some of the "core" bodies have come and gone over time.
It's all about lower bout width and body style (I'll use the generic term "F-body" to distinguish that shape from the dreadnoughts which were basically identical across all models) , and it started with archtops:
17" (X350/375, and F50)
16" (F40 )
15" (F30)
13" (M20)
(Note I edited inaccurate info regarding Johnny Smith/AA models having 18" and Starfire having a 16" bout
And of course the dreadnought bodies.
I'm a whole lot more familiar with the acoustic than electric side of Guild, so not sure if the 15"' and 13" lower bouts correlated with electric models, and there may be legacy outlines on the electric side that have been "standard" since the beginning that I simply am unfamiliar with.
One example would be the M75 Aristocrat, not sure how wide it is but body is smaller than Starfire but doesn't appear to be F30 shaped.
Anyway, for sure 4 primary lower bout widths on the flattop side, (and at least 3 on the electric side); subject to evolutionary variations of fractions of an inch in outline and width over the years,
2 primary scale lengths: 25.5 (or 25-5/8")and 24-3/4" (plus bass long and short);
3 primary nut widths: 1-5/8", 1-11/16, 1-34 (plus 1-13/16 for 12-ers);
3 primary tone woods: Maple, Mahogany, and Rosewood; and the same 3 primary top woods.
2 primary fretboard/bridge woods: Rosewood and Ebony
That's what's been consistent about Guild since day one.
Lessee, if I figured this right, there's room for 756 combinations right there, before we take into account cutaways.
Whoops, forgot arched-back and flatback construction: 864 possible combinations (flattops only).
(Before cutaways, 3/4 scale bodies, and 12-string variants. And classicals)
:glee:
Recently, in the haze of a particularly severe OCD episode, I attempted to calculate which outlines have yielded the most progeny for the brand.
The answer?
Looks like a very close tie of either plus one or 2 on either one, allowing for models I may have missed or been unaware of:
16" lower bout F-body (my beloved F40 outline) and:
Dreadnoughts, both coming in at about 33 models each (that's just on the Flat-top side for the F40, there are no pure electric dreadnoughts unless one includes the DS4x's.
But by far more variations in terms of body woods/scale lengths, and "CE" designs have been done on the 16" F body than any other flattop, as far as I can tell.
Is it merely coincidence that when Mark Dronge approached George Gruhn about revamped designs for the lineup, the first body up was the 16" F-body?
Or that Guild's first 12-strings were 16" F-bodies?
Does the absence of a 16" F-body from Oxnard's lineup signal a death-knell for Guild's historic core lineup of body types?
 
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