This blonde beauty was left to me by a dear friend and I have been trying to get some info on it. It appears to me that Guild doesn't recognize Westerly Guilds. Can someone tell me anything about that?
Hi Ellie, welcome aboard!
Guild was bought and sold several times over the years.
Fender owned them from 1995 until 2014 at which time they sold it to
Cordoba
Music
Group.
I don't know how much production info they passed on to CMG but that's why CMG may not have all the info about past history and model specs, also they may simply have not had the opportunity to "absorb" the info into their own archives yet, while they're under pressure to get US production back up to full capacity.
JF30's were introduced in the mid-eighties and were in production all the way up to the early '00's in Corona CA.
There is an s/n guide on Guild's website ("History of my Guild"), and while even those records are known to be flawed, I suspect it'll be "close enough" for your purposes.
Otherwise our member Hans Moust can give you an exact build date from the s/n.
This site, a labor of love maintained by a member here, has a bit more info and specs for JF30's:
http://westerlyguildguitars.com/links.htm
EDIT: OOPS there I go posting before reading all other replies, apologies for redundant info.
BUT: I'm pretty sure I recall Hans mentioning those blue labels were used on guitars destined to be sold outside US, like Canada.
Might explain the slight variation from US labeling format.
In the US the color was normally a suffix on the model number, as in "JF-30 Bld" or "JF30-SB"
As for "Blonde" vs "Sunburst", structurally there's no difference, it's simply a matter of how the top was stained (or not, in the case of the "blonde" finish)
