I'm going from memory here so take it for what it is but I believe the X-50 was a Granada and the T-50 was the Cordoba. (I don't have my catalog scans here at work to back me up.)
'Granada' was the original model name for the X-50, which was later changed to 'Cordoba', since Gibson already marketed a banjo with the Granada name.
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
"Doh!"
There's my electric blind spot again, thank you both!
So methinks Navarre stands for body size - there are other Navarre besides F50 & F50R
Only the original F48 (as far as I know), and yes, it was the same body size, so there's probably something to that.
Still the primary purpose was to give a name to a given model and the models
were different sizes, after all.
Names were just more marketable than numbers at the time, witness the vast prevalence of car model
names compered to model numbers right through until the '80's.
In fact for the past few years we're starting to see the pendulum swing the other way again.
Like Hans said, he'd rather call an Aristocrat an Aristocrat instead of an M-75.
Just before I bought my F-30, I did some searching : I found the F-30 was not currently built, but the F-30 Aragon did appear on the Guild website...It's not the same guitar : the Aragon F-30 has an Adirondack top (the F-30 has a sitka top)...
That only applies to
current F30's, originally it was just a name, it wasn't used to indicate upgraded materials until Tacoma revived it,.
They also revived the "Valencia" name to indicate an F40 with an adi top and the "Bluegrass" models which only became synonymous with "Adi top" in Tacoma.
Just like Navarre, Aragon is a Spanish region, and I'd bet that maybe a F50 Navarre would be a higher-end model, and possibly feature an Adirondack top too (??), at least if as Stuball48 said, it is a top of the line Flat top model...
Question's come up before, and as far as we know Guild never used Adi until the Tacoma era.
In fact the evidence we've seen tends to support just the opposite probability, because it was overharvested for aircraft use in WWII and not readily available again until the early '90's, and I've never seen any Guild literature or credible input from somebody like Hans or a former employee stating they used it,
until Tacoma. ('05)
"Navarre" was never re-introduced for the F50 and it may well be that's because it
didn't get an Adi top.
The question about "Why not?" has come up before as well, especially regarding the F50's dreadnought counterpart the D55, and all that could be guessed was that for some reason those two got along fine with their traditional AAA spruce tops.
I have absolutely no doubt Tacoma tested Adi tops on F50's and D55's and decided there were good "sound" reasons not to go there, pun intended.
ALL guilds started getting Adi
bracing in Tacoma, though, and that right there might also have been enough to improve the F50 and D55.