standard neck radius on Guild dreadnaughts?

[ce blues]

Gents and Ladies-with-soldering irons,

my query is regarding whether the Rhode Island Guild dreadnaughts had a standard neck radius as with Gibson, Martin and even Fender acoustic guitars. I believe the Gibson neck radius to be about 20" for their big box acoustics and Martin (if my memory isn't playing me false) around 16".... I own two Guild dreadnaughts (a D30 with maple arch-back and a 1972 D25 that is an awesome acoustic slide guitar) and my recent modification of the saddle on my D30 in the course of installing a Fishman Ellipse Matrix Blend saddle transducer/condenser mic and preamp system got me close and personal with the radius question as it pertained to milling the old saddle to accomodate the new transducer. It also got me to take a closer look at my D25 and I've come to the conclusion that installing both a new bone nut and bone saddle would be a good upgrade for an ax that has done 20+ years of gigging and roadwork.

I don't happen to own one of those handy Stew-Mac fretboard radius gauges...so could one of you good folk tell me what fretboard curvature Guild used while the Rhode Island factory was still in business. I'd also like to know the radius of the fretboard on my 1969 S-100 Polara as this guitar is in dire need of a re-fretting job....it was my "go-to" guitar between 1969 and 1986 and has seen many hard miles and smoky bars when we were both youngsters. thanks in advance for any information you can give me,

ce blues

 

[Guildmark]

Interesting question, ce. I searched back through the LTG archives and found several posts on the topic, but only specs for certain guitars. They were all 12". I found one that verified the 16" on the Martin, too. But I didn't see anyting in our threads that confirmed 12" as the standard for all Guild models. Gonna need Hans or one of the other really educated folks to provide the real assurance.

Frosty posted an interesting thread about neck radius recently - on nylon string guitars. Taylor is doing it but Guild isn't "enlightened" yet.

Let us know what you find out.

 

[GardMan]

You might look at this thread:
http://www.letstalkguild.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6238&hilit=fretboard+radius
From Hans' posts, it sounds like there WASN"T a standard radius.

 

[ce blues]

thanks guys,

I guess what that amounts to is that I should expect no compound radius for my '72 D25 and my '95 D30 should be on the near order of a 12" radius. I guess what I really need to do is determine the D30's actual radius (one of my books on guitar repair describes a technique for making a radius gauge from cardboard.....I've forgotten the details, but it seemed simple enough when I read about it a few years ago; so its back to the books). As far as the D25's nut and saddle work, I suppose I'll just fabricate my new parts by building them to be mirror images of the old parts. thanks for the responses and the link to the earlier discussion.

ce