Production in New Hartford

SFIV1967

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Well...anybody willing to give it a try? Maybe we can build our own thumbnail sketch of New Hartford production?
Good luck...not sure what you want to achieve and why...does it matter?

2VOKBZU.jpg

I think your Orpheum estimate is wildly high.
+1
Ralf
 
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fronobulax

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Looks like Nov 13, 14 and 15 from 2012. Those days averaged a little over 7 guitars per day but since I am lazy lets just say 10. That means 50 per week and 2500 for 50 weeks of operation in a year. That's consistent with all of the production anecdotes that I have heard and the claim that 5,000 was a target that might have been achievable in 2015 with one shift.
 

Tom O

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Thanks for the decoding. I have been collecting Doyle Dykes serial numbers from Reverb to determine the number built. Out of 22 sold I have 15 serial numbers. They have six digits after the number. Best day (for DD) in 2013 (NR) was 11 when two DD-6's were built, 010 and 011. Serial number does not indicate wood since one was an RCE and the MCE. NQ was 2014 the last year they were built. They seemed to produce them in pairs since three had the same day code. They couldn't have made as many Doyle Dyke specials as Taylor.
 

fronobulax

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My decoding is actually buried in the serial number chart linked to from here.

Tacoma and New Hartford used the same convention from February 2005 to whenever in 2014 NH ceased production.

First letter is T for Tacoma or N for New Hartford.
Second letter is the year with 2005 being I, 2006 being J and so on.
Next three digits are the Julian date for the year.
Next there digits identify which unit built that day - 003 was the third guitar, 007 the seventh and so on.

As an aside this convention does not apply to overseas factories which typically did not embed the date but used a reference to internal production and batch records.

Interesting on the DD. The ledger columns clearly indicate no attempt to associate model or wood with the actual serial so your finding is expected. Leaving in pairs is an interesting surprise to me.
 
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sailingshoes72

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Checking the serial number chart that you linked to in the above post, the second letter indicates the year of manufacture. But according to the chart info, that dating system was introduced by the Tacoma guitar manufacturing plant in 1998; so the letter B is for that specific year (1998).

B=1998
I=2005
M=2009
N=2010

If I'm reading that correctly. I was interested because I was checking out a NH built D-50 on craigslist recently. Does anyone know exactly when Ren Ferguson went to work at the New Hartford factory?
 
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fronobulax

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Checking the serial number chart that you linked to in the above post, the second letter indicates the year of manufacture. But according to the chart info, that dating system was introduced by the Tacoma guitar manufacturing plant in 1998; so the letter B is for that specific year (1998).

B=1998
I=2005
M=2009
N=2010

If I'm reading that correctly. I was interested because I was checking out a NH built D-50 on craigslist recently. Does anyone know exactly when Res Furguson went to work at the New Hartford factory?

Correct. Typo. I will see about correcting.

I = 2005 • J = 2006 • K = 2007 • L = 2008 • M = 2009 • N = 2010
(quote from the PDF).
 

fronobulax

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Does anyone know exactly when Ren Ferguson went to work at the New Hartford factory?

I'm going to say 2012. But it is generally acknowledged that the first instrument out of New Hartford that he actually contributed to was the 60th Anniversary (2013) and even then it was mostly his name and the bling. It's pretty much a production F-30. The Orpheums are his but I could argue you can't tell the difference between a pre-Ren and a post-Ren D-50 from NH. If you want to buy Ren's Guilds, go for Oxnard production.
 

sailingshoes72

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I'm going to say 2012. But it is generally acknowledged that the first instrument out of New Hartford that he actually contributed to was the 60th Anniversary (2013) and even then it was mostly his name and the bling. It's pretty much a production F-30. The Orpheums are his but I could argue you can't tell the difference between a pre-Ren and a post-Ren D-50 from NH. If you want to buy Ren's Guilds, go for Oxnard production.

Thanks! That's helpful.
 

fronobulax

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A June 2014 Hartford Courant article quotes a NH staff member: "In the last year [before the NH plant closed], the crew of 47 was generally making about 14 guitars a day... most were Guild guitars."


14 per day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks gives 3,500 guitars of all brands in a year.
 
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Ren Ferguson is quoted as saying Gibson's Custom Shop was turning out about 12 guitars per day, while he was running that operation. If Guild's New Hartford normal production output was about 14 guitars per day, I'd say that was pretty much a custom shop operation. I doubt the crafts-people were working at quarter-speed out of laziness. The guitars built at NH speak for themselves.
 

Neal

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I have never seen a Guild serial number from New Hartford that had greater than “12” for the last two digits.

My guess is that there are fewer than 10,000 New Hartford Guilds, total.
 

fronobulax

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I have never seen a Guild serial number from New Hartford that had greater than “12” for the last two digits.

My guess is that there are fewer than 10,000 New Hartford Guilds, total.

Thats a lotta guitars, when you think about the whole market...so, where are they all? :smile-new:

Dunno but that is not a lot of guitars considering that Westerly cranked about about 25,000 in its best year of production. The ever accurate Google says Martin made 85,000 guitars a year as of 2009. A more nuanced source says the USA production was 20,000 in 2013. But 10,000 instruments in 5 years suggests NH Guilds are are a tiny portion of the market.
 

Russman

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I'm not sure there's anything written that's sort of a history of New Hartford production, Robert, but I can give you a few facts.

The facility that Fender bought was part of Kaman Music. It was building Ovation and Hamer guitars at the time, and started building D-55 prototypes after the purchase through a good part of 2008. First production was January of 2009, D-55s only, shown at winter NAMM that year. This was very shortly after the actual shutdown of Tacoma in 2008, but there was no overlap (not including the prototypes that is). So the 2009 builds were all "NM" prefixed serial numbers.

New Hartford was shut down during the spring of 2014. Can't remember whether it was end of May or June, but something like that. "NR" prefix.

Production numbers are not actually published anywhere. They might be known, but it'd be a little complex figuring it out as New Hartford also build Fender acoustics a bit. There was a log book that some of us saw which every guitar that went through final assembly got registered in. But, I'm not aware that anyone actually saw it in its entirety to do a real count.
What does NR mean? Thanks
 

Cougar

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I have never seen a Guild serial number from New Hartford that had greater than “12” for the last two digits.
The serial number on my F50R is NO147013. :) It's a good one, too. :p
 

chazmo

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Well they were using something similar at least as early as 2005 so 10 years later it's just how they do things.
Yeah, the serial numbering system that New Hartford used came from Tacoma. That evolved from Tacoma's own home-brand guitars. The good news about this system is that you can tell very quickly what the year of origin was. I.e., the second letter, I = 2005, J = 2006, ... R = 2014.
 
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