Guild was purchased by Fender in 1995. They moved to Corona, CA in 2001. That was rather short lived however and in 2004 they moved to Tacoma, WA. Tacoma was also short lived and then they moved to New Hartford, CT. When Fender moved Guild to Tacoma, many of the unsold guitars they had were liquidated through Musical Instrument Reclamation Corp. who does sales of guitars that either need some work, OR are being sold at a reduced price without warranty. They also did this in Tacoma after a couple of years there, mostly with the Contemporary Series. This is done to eliminate excess stock and having to move a lot of guitars around to a new factory. It also brings in money during a relocation.
The only reason I'm giving this rather condensed and brief outline, is that any time you sell off stock at a lowered price with no warranty, people are going to talk about quality problems. I don't know of any actual quality problems at Corona, or at least no more than at any other factory, but people tend to think less of the brand for a bit when they do this. Just human nature, I guess? Now the Contemporary Series from Tacoma had some serious problems. Some were great and some were not. It just depends.
Welcome to LTG. That Corona D55 is a beauty. They made a really lot of great guitars there.
