I'm not believing anything as I have no clue . It was a comment to me at another forum . I was defending the Guild name lol
Anyway as I said it's new to me as I never heard of the issue which not surprising lol
The guy in the vid I thought said that the spray issues carried over from Tocoma guitars into Guild .
Wouldn't surprise me since Fender just moved Guild production right into the same workspace, if I'm remembering previous comments correctly.
I suspect there's more to the story than simple incompetence though, as finish issues also occurred when Fender began making 'em in Corona.
In Corona, where they'd never sprayed flattop acoustics before, they actually went to the expense of building a brand new spray booth for NCL; in fact it also had the ability to spray poly.
Since the finishes aren't compatible, switching would have required very thorough cleaning of the equipment each time.
One has to wonder if perhaps a less-than thorough cleaning after a poly-spraying session might have resulted in contaminated NCL?
But even more to the point is that during that era, NCL itself was undergoing a lot of evolution in formulas in pursuit of lower VOC emissions, spraying itself even became regulated by CARB and booths required certification against excessive emission of VOC's.
My educated guess is that
Corona's problems were due to learning curve required for all 3 elements: Spray techs, equipment, and formula.
Eventually they got it down, my D40 has the best finish of all 3 and others have said the same about their "late" (post '02) Coronas.
OK, as for Tacoma, I don't recall ever hearing whether the existing Tacoma booth was retained or if Fender moved that brand new booth up there (which I kind of doubt because it would still have been extremely useful for Fender electric production).
Leading up to:
I suspect the existing Tacoma booth was used and the finish issues were the result of inexperience and possibly poor surface prep on the Tacoma branded guitars, and inexperience with new formulas when spraying Guilds.
I remember Taylor Martin Guild's story and didn't realize when I first heard it that NCL itself was undergoing rapid evolution during that period. (Heck, it
still is)
I now wonder if they switched to a formula with too much plasticizer and maybe not enough VOC's, thus the extended time of "softness".
One even wonders if perhaps the unusually high and almost constant humidity in Tacoma might have affected the curing process itself?
There's a certain amount of drying time required between the multiple coats, it's one of the most time-consuming steps in production.
Maybe they miscalculated the drying time.
So um.... Tell me about Tacoma guitars . ��
There are some Tacoma models with a cult following, the Papoose and Thunderchief Bass come to mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Guitars