Oxnard Guild M-20

davismanLV said:

Exactly!! I grew up right near Oxnard, CA and so I sometimes forget that it's not a very attractive name. I don't even think about it. But I realize that some people do think about it.

Hey Tiki, I remember Dr. Demento!! Was that a left coast thing or was it a national radio show?

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I used to hear the Doctor on the Mighty 690 when I was in high school - XEWW-AM, which broadcast out of Tijuana, Mexico, but had transmitters more powerful than the FCC in the USA allowed. That was real pirate radio in the 70's and 80's. The home studio for the show was KMET in Los Angeles (94.7 FM), but we couldn't get that in the mountains near Ojai where I lived in my HS years.

Dr. Demento was syndicated from 1974 to 1992 by Westwood One.

Whereabouts around here did you grow up?

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To keep this on point, or close thereto, several major musical instrument manufacturers have relocated to Oxnard. DW Drums is just a few miles away from CMG/Guild, but also omits the "Made in Oxnard" moniker. The DW badges also state only "Made in USA"

Larrivee Guitar labels, however, proudly state the Oxnard origin.

I grew up in Thousand Oaks. Spent a lot of time in Camarillo and Oxnard. Also, Ventura. Had friends who lived in Ojai when I was going to Moorpark College. I'd love to live in Ojai these days. I'm sure it's very different from when I was a kid. I graduated from Newbury Park HS in 1971. :encouragement:

guildman63 said:

I'm with you, Tom. The format of the SN means nothing to me. Nor does the mention of California, but omission of Oxnard. To me, California is just one big republic anyway. :highly_amused: :rolleyes-new:

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Hmm... My issue is that a sequential list, like what Guild used to have, gives you no insight into when the guitar was built/finished during the year. The flip side is that if you're interested in how many guitars were produced in a year (a question we always had in our minds with New Hartford), the sequential list is more likely to yield that answer.

Anyway, as Guild historians/aficionados/collectors, I think it's important stuff.

Why would anyone care which day and month a guitar was built during a year? Other than being obsessive about every little detail? Sometimes I think people want to know more about their guitars than actually matters in reality. A date stamp will usually give you a month and year. But the DAY of the month? How could that possibly matter? I'm all ears......

The problem with Guild is that the date stamps could be off, as the guitar may be completed well after the stamping on the head stock or in the body indicated. Didn't they sometimes not even match ?

Well, I really want to know the YEAR, the MONTH and the DAY it was completed.... AND if it was the 3rd guitar completed that day, WHAT TIME???? I mean, don't leave me HANGING!!!

Astrology, Tom.

Was it born under a bad sign? Was there a bad moon on the rise? Was the moon in the 7th house?

davismanLV said:

Why would anyone care which day and month a guitar was built during a year? Other than being obsessive about every little detail? Sometimes I think people want to know more about their guitars than actually matters in reality. A date stamp will usually give you a month and year. But the DAY of the month? How could that possibly matter? I'm all ears......

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I think that's a good point, but I didn't state the problems with using a sequential list for serial numbers. Perhaps it isn't obvious, but the issue is that it's hard to keep a sequential list correct. You'll get duplicates (or, less important, gaps), or you'll get many cases where they won't give a guitar a serial number. All of those are serious problems for us collectors in the future.

davismanLV said:

Why would anyone care which day and month a guitar was built during a year? Other than being obsessive about every little detail? Sometimes I think people want to know more about their guitars than actually matters in reality. A date stamp will usually give you a month and year. But the DAY of the month? How could that possibly matter? I'm all ears......

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Mine's older than yours - nanny, nanny, boo boo!!

JohnW63 said:

The problem with Guild is that the date stamps could be off, as the guitar may be completed well after the stamping on the head stock or in the body indicated. Didn't they sometimes not even match ?

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To be inappropriately precise, the relationship between the serial number, the existence and/or meaning of any date stamps, and when an instrument was in a particular stage of production has varied throughout Guild's history. Westerly stamped necks when they were completed but made no effort to use the necks in any kind of serial number order. Furthermore there are documented cases where the neck was not actually used until a year or two after stamping and cases where serial numbers were inadvertently reused or different on the headstock and the label. But none of those problems have been documented for post-Westerly factories.

That said, New Hartford was very clear about what the embedded date in the serial number meant - a particular unit completed on a particular day. I'm sure there are people who will obsess about the definition of completed - for example I can't actually recall whether a "completed" guitar went into a case and then went to be boxed up and warehoused or whether it went to final QA and then into a case. There are those who would argue that if QA fixed a minor flaw the guitar was not completed until QA was done. But that is not me

So what's the practice at Cordoba?

In NH, I think the serial number was assigned when the guitar went through final assembly. Most likely it was actually assigned in the stringing room there, which was the last step in the process of final assembly because that's where they kept the log book. I didn't actually see a label being written and affixed in the stringing room though, so I guess it's possible the number was assigned earlier, but anyway that's what I remember.

chazmo said:

In NH, I think the serial number was assigned when the guitar went through final assembly. Most likely it was actually assigned in the stringing room there, which was the last step in the process of final assembly because that's where they kept the log book. I didn't actually see a label being written and affixed in the stringing room though, so I guess it's possible the number was assigned earlier, but anyway that's what I remember.

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I forgot the room with the log book was the stringing room but it was definitely where the serial number was written on the label and the label affixed to the instrument according to Darren at LMG I, II or III.

One thing to consider is that as time goes on the guitars change slightly. I know some D-55s had the front strap button on the body above the neck, and others on the heel of the neck. Some had the old D-TAR system and others the Multisource. Knowing when a particular guitar was made would help to identify the characteristics of that particular guitar. I'm one to think that dates can be helpful. Most other brands that I'm familiar with incorporate the date somewhere in the serial number.

gibsonjunkie said:

One thing to consider is that as time goes on the guitars change slightly. I know some D-55s had the front strap button on the body above the neck, and others on the heel of the neck. Some had the old D-TAR system and others the Multisource. Knowing when a particular guitar was made would help to identify the characteristics of that particular guitar. I'm one to think that dates can be helpful. Most other brands that I'm familiar with incorporate the date somewhere in the serial number.

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That's a good point, GJ, and sort of a corollary to my point about sequential numbering being a bit problematical. In practice, though, I think it was rare that we'd know what the actual date was when a change order went into effect.

Anyway, it's worth noting that Guild has used a variety of numbering schemes over the years and this is nothing new. I wish that Oxnard would bring back the tradition of branding the headstock with the serial number again, which has been lost to us since Tacoma. Perhaps that'd mean assigning the serial number earlier in the process, but there is a lot of collector value in that branded number.

gibsonjunkie said:

One thing to consider is that as time goes on the guitars change slightly. I know some D-55s had the front strap button on the body above the neck, and others on the heel of the neck. Some had the old D-TAR system and others the Multisource. Knowing when a particular guitar was made would help to identify the characteristics of that particular guitar. I'm one to think that dates can be helpful. Most other brands that I'm familiar with incorporate the date somewhere in the serial number.

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Oxnard/Cordoba Guild has incorporated the year into the serial number.

One example a forum member posted is "C160003" which imples the 3rd instrument manufactured in 2016. presumably, they will start over in 2017 with "C170001."

chazmo said:

I wish that Oxnard would bring back the tradition of branding the headstock with the serial number again, which has been lost to us since Tacoma. Perhaps that'd mean assigning the serial number earlier in the process, but there is a lot of collector value in that branded number.

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Now this I totally agree with. Makes tampering far more difficult and just seems like a really GOOD idea. I don't know why they aren't stamped any more!

Tom, check this out: http://www.letstalkguild.com/ltg/sh...rial-Numbers&p=1725731&viewfull=1#post1725731

This is a good start!

guildman63 said:

I'm with you, Tom. The format of the SN means nothing to me. Nor does the mention of California, but omission of Oxnard. To me, California is just one big republic anyway. :highly_amused: :rolleyes-new:

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And for you forgetful types all ya gotta do is look at the flag:

JohnW63 said:

The problem with Guild is that the date stamps could be off, as the guitar may be completed well after the stamping on the head stock or in the body indicated. Didn't they sometimes not even match ?

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That only applied during Westerly due to the way they operated, as Frono mentioned.

davismanLV said:

Why would anyone care which day and month a guitar was built during a year? Other than being obsessive about every little detail? Sometimes I think people want to know more about their guitars than actually matters in reality. A date stamp will usually give you a month and year. But the DAY of the month? How could that possibly matter? I'm all ears......

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For the most part you're probably right but it could be useful down the road if one wanted to trace running changes in production specs like Gibsonjunkie mentions.
I'm sure they have a cross-reference log inside Oxnard but probably believe, like you, that knowing exact production date isn't vitally important to most folks.
And it might be another level of security against counterfeiting if there's not a "Date decoding system".
I still get a kick out of knowing my D25's neck block was stamped on Halloween, though.

chazmo said:

In NH, I think the serial number was assigned when the guitar went through final assembly. Most likely it was actually assigned in the stringing room there, which was the last step in the process of final assembly because that's where they kept the log book. I didn't actually see a label being written and affixed in the stringing room though, so I guess it's possible the number was assigned earlier, but anyway that's what I remember.

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Betcha a buck they put the label in before the strings went on.