GGJaguar
Reverential Member
When I was looking for my first guitar, my college roommate (who taught me how to play) handed me a stack of guitar catalogs. The Guild guitars were the standouts for me, notably the D-55. To this day I think it’s the most beautiful dreadnaught. While I ended up going the way of the 12-fret dread (mostly Martin), I figured it’s finally time to get a D-55 and there was no better opportunity than for my 60th birthday. Though my b-day is still a few weeks away, Richard was able to hook me up with his ’77 D-55 and I couldn’t be happier. When it arrived, I just stared and admired it for a while. The exhilaration I felt when I flipped through those early ‘80s Guild catalogs came flooding back.
After my ogling was done, I tuned it up and played for an hour. It took me that long to get a feel for a 14-fret dreadnaught again and it also gave me time to decide what strings to use. The sound of this D-55 reminded me a lot of my ’81 Martin D-35 which was a fine guitar and probably one of the best “strummers” I’ve owned. However, the Martin had 1/4" bracing and would run out of headroom and get muddy when pushed hard. The Guild, with its even tonal response from top to bottom, just gets louder without getting overly muddy. I think it has knocked the Martin from “Best Strummer” status. Not bad for a rosewood dread with straight bracing… or so I thought. While the guitar was on the workbench for the string change I checked out the bracing and discovered that the X-brace and tone bars are tapered, not straight. I couldn’t get a good photo, but it looks exactly like the bracing in Gardman’s 1976 D-50 shown below.
My first thought for strings was phosphor-bronze mediums (.013 - .056) since these are the strings of choice for my 12-fret dreads. However, I opted for a hybrid set (medium bottom strings with light gauge top strings) from John Pearse. This set works very well for strumming and gives the D-55 good bottom end punch with a sparkly top. With the 1 11/16” nut width, 2 1/8” string spacing and low-wide frets, I have some trouble playing fingerstyle on this guitar, but I have other guitars that excel for that. Oddly, this example has Grover Rotomatic tuners while most D-55s from 1977 have Schaller M6 tuners. The other thing I noticed is that this guitar is heavy. At 5.9 lb/2.7 kg it’s heavier than any dread I’ve owned (all under 5 lb/2.3 kg). Anyway, it doesn’t matter much since I mainly play while sitting. The bottom line is this D-55 begs to be strummed and the description in the 1976 catalog is true: "Its tone spectrum is beautifully balanced..." And finally, it will always be the most beautiful of dreadnaughts in my book.
After my ogling was done, I tuned it up and played for an hour. It took me that long to get a feel for a 14-fret dreadnaught again and it also gave me time to decide what strings to use. The sound of this D-55 reminded me a lot of my ’81 Martin D-35 which was a fine guitar and probably one of the best “strummers” I’ve owned. However, the Martin had 1/4" bracing and would run out of headroom and get muddy when pushed hard. The Guild, with its even tonal response from top to bottom, just gets louder without getting overly muddy. I think it has knocked the Martin from “Best Strummer” status. Not bad for a rosewood dread with straight bracing… or so I thought. While the guitar was on the workbench for the string change I checked out the bracing and discovered that the X-brace and tone bars are tapered, not straight. I couldn’t get a good photo, but it looks exactly like the bracing in Gardman’s 1976 D-50 shown below.
My first thought for strings was phosphor-bronze mediums (.013 - .056) since these are the strings of choice for my 12-fret dreads. However, I opted for a hybrid set (medium bottom strings with light gauge top strings) from John Pearse. This set works very well for strumming and gives the D-55 good bottom end punch with a sparkly top. With the 1 11/16” nut width, 2 1/8” string spacing and low-wide frets, I have some trouble playing fingerstyle on this guitar, but I have other guitars that excel for that. Oddly, this example has Grover Rotomatic tuners while most D-55s from 1977 have Schaller M6 tuners. The other thing I noticed is that this guitar is heavy. At 5.9 lb/2.7 kg it’s heavier than any dread I’ve owned (all under 5 lb/2.3 kg). Anyway, it doesn’t matter much since I mainly play while sitting. The bottom line is this D-55 begs to be strummed and the description in the 1976 catalog is true: "Its tone spectrum is beautifully balanced..." And finally, it will always be the most beautiful of dreadnaughts in my book.
