Well thanks again adorshki. You are very helpful. That is the first reference I have seen in print as to the radius. It is as if they wanted to keep it a secret. So setting mine at 16" was not out of the ballpark. I really think I hit the sweet spot for my particular neck profile. It almost plays itself. Action is super low.
I've started to think that part of Fender's marketing strategy for the brand was to start printing lit that appealed to a more sophisticated buyer in the early-mid '90's.
Publishing the specs appeals to the "cork-sniffers".
Prior to that, the marketing emphasis was on playability and construction quality. For the guys who actually
play.
Fender's idea may have had some merit at the time, at least it gave us several issues of the Guild Gallery, which contain a series on the construction of a D55, complete with photos. Porno for guys like us.
I think originally, the mentality was, "Make it for the guy who knows how to play. The playability will sell itself, and those guys don't care about specs, they'll recognize quality and will either like the sound and playability or not. So who cares about specs?."
They were always pretty clear about woods used and solid tops, though, stuff which was a more common measure of "quality" in the '50's-'70's, I think?
Also, I suspect now that Guild changed specs on the fly simply to make subtle variations in a model to appeal to more potential customers, or to help maximize production economy. The most common variation of "spec" I've seen reported here is nut width, for example.
A couple of D30's from the mid '80's with 1-5/8" nuts when "spec" was 1-11/16. Thing is, those 2 had s/n's within 3or 4 digits of each other, which suggested to me that they had to have started in the same batch and that they built
at least 6 of 'em. (Guild's "batch quantity", flattops were built in multiples of 6) .
So I'm thinking they might have actually done it on purpose: "We're gonna build some of these with a narrow nut."
But again, if they don't
commit to a spec, then they're free to vary as seen fit. I kinda like it, actually.
I still get surprised by stuff we see here. Keeps things interesting!
I think the publishing of specs was co-incident with the process of "formalizing" QC, too: "Here's what we guarantee, folks."
OK, gotta eat now.
Oh, almost forgot, those Guild Galleries can be seen courtesy of our host GAD, thanks to his painstaking efforts in making that stuff readily accessible.
Link to his site here:
Welcome to GAD’s Guilds guitar catalog collection. I’ve spent many years (and dollars) collecting these catalogs for my research of various Guild guitars for my GAD’s Guild articles. I have physical copies of every catalog shown which were all painstakingly scanned or photographed, then...
www.gad.net
