For most of my life, I owned two guitars: an old Favilla classical that belonged to my mother, and a 1981 Ibanez Artwood AW-75 that I bought new my freshman summer in college. The Artwood 12 was (and is) wonderful, and compared favorably to every other 12-string I could afford at that time as a summer hire fixing printed Ademco Alarm company circuit boards. It also sounded and played better to me than the Martins I tried as well, and those I couldn't afford anyway.
Fast forward to 2007... I had been collecting Taylor guitars for a while and really enjoying the wood-centric aesthetic that Taylor has always been famous for. Also, I was starting to play a lot. I visited my local music store and hanging on the wall was a new F-512. I found it almost laughable with all that bling and that plasticy-looking, G-shield headstock. Then I played it and had one of those "Maxell blown away" moments. Holy shnikies! That was a watershed moment for me.
I went back to the store at least three times before that guitar landed on the 20% off sale rack and I bought it straight away. Over the months while I was dreaming about that guitar, I found LTG and learned that Guild was still alive, although many of the folks here at the time were serious Westerly fans and weren't interested in new Guilds. But we all had a lot of fun together, and it was a much cooler community, and really far more honest about their guitars, than the folks I used to talk to on other guitar forums.
Fast forward to 2020... Tacoma was shuttered in 2008. New Hartford in 2014. And then Guild was sold completely to Cordoba Music Group, and now Guilds are coming from Oxnard. We've seen a tremendous amount of churn even during my relatively recent attachment to Guild. But the brand still lives, and killer 12-strings (and others) are still being built.
So, I agree with the comments above about why, but it's also true that there's never been a bad period for Guild (12-strings included).
