I was a Guild dealer (1977-1988 when I got out of retail music). As a bassist I was immediately attracted to the Ashbory and we got one. It was a little weird, but we figured it'd at least get some attention, which it did. It was a great way to introduce people to the Pilot bass, which was a good seller for us, partly because the owner of the store and I were pretty rabid fans of Guild and the Pilot filled a great niche that our Fender, G&L, and Peavey basses didn't.
Anyway, the original Guild Ashbory basses had some problems with the tuning machines and the strings, but Guild shipped them with a spare set of strings. They also shipped it with a little bag of talcum powder (suggested so your fingers slid on the strings easily).
Fast forward to the big Guild/DeArmond push from FMIC in the late '90s. I finally bought an (DeArmond) Ashbory then and compared to the original Guild one, the DeArmond is better, if only for the geared tuning machines which are a huge improvement. The first strings FMIC had for them were very real problems, with them being known for self-desctruction. My own had three D strings come apart just sitting in the bag over about a year. At some point they changed the formulation of the strings. I got a set from Jay Pilzer about six years or more ago, and they've been stable and reliable.
The bass ain't for everyone, but it does a decent emulation of a string bass. The big strings have that slow attack that I can't get from an electric bass. Combined with the relatively quick decay it does get to the essential elements of a double bass' envelope. If you want to hear one, get a copy of Jack Bruce's "A Question of Time" and listen to the bass on the song "Kwela"- it's an Ashbory. I don't know of any other widely available commercial recordings of the Ashbory.
One idea I floated to Guild via our sales rep back when the Ashbory first came out was to make a double neck Pilot, with the Ashbory being the upper horn. That way one could use a regular strap and solve the issue of the Ashbory being so unbalanced. Plus it would look great and make the Ashbory a lot more practical. The usual issue with double necks is the weight, but the Pilot and the Ashbory combined would weigh less than a lot of '70s Fender basses .
John