Re: What inspired you to play Guilds?
When I started to play guitar, the shop in our area that had the "cool" guy running it (he had sideburns, had been home from Vietnam for a year or so, actually knew who Hendrix and Clapton were, and didn't wear a suit and tie to work) was a Guild dealer. Being new I didn't have any prejudices about guitars yet. The Guild catalog had a picture of Clapton in his Cream days playing a big Guild acoustic, my older sister had introduced me to John Denver (this was well before "Rocky Mountain High", more in the days of "The Ballad Of Spiro Agnew" and the John Prine covers) whose album covers had those Guilds on them, and I'd seen Buddy Guy somewhere with his Starfire IV. Kinda left an impression.
Years later I'm working at that store and came to really appreciate Guild's consistency, value, and craftsmanship. Our sales rep was a wonderful guy who helped us choose the right stock for our shop (as opposed the the Gibson reps who always insisted we needed a couple of L-5s, a Super 400, and whatever crappy solid body wasn't selling when what we really needed was Les Pauls and SGs) and that helped fuel my appreciation for the line. A guitarist I gigged with called me one Saturday and said "What's a Guild Starfire three? Is it worth $150?" He was at a garage sale, and showed up at the gig that night with a red SF III with the DeArmond pickups and a Bigsby. We used to do Neil Young's "Down By The River" and JW had an uncanny resembelence to Neil's singing (in a good way- I LIKE Neil Young!). He played the Starfire for that song, and it sounded so much like Neil that the pool players in the bar stopped playing to stand and listen to us...
I chanced to play a used F-30R at one of the other stores in our small chain and was hooked on small rosewood guitars. But, being the manager of a guitar store with two young boys ain't a way to afford to buy good guitars even with the substantial discount I could give myself.
So, I bought my first Guild about a year after I left retail and got a "real job"- a Guild Pilot Pro bass. A few years later I got a once in a lifetime bonus at work, and it allowed me to finally, after 16 years of waiting, to buy a small rosewood Guild- a brand new A-50, just two weeks before FMIC officially bought Guild, (serial #3, BTW).
Still find them to be the most consistent guitars that also sound great and inspiring. The most stable necks on the market, and they've survived several decades of ineffective management (under several owners, this is NOT a slam againist FMIC!). The stable is that 1995 A-50, an F-47CE (mahogany) from around 2001, a Pilot bass (on permanent loan to my niece), and a DeArmond Ashbory bass. I'd love to have an F-212 and a D-40.
John