What is it that draws you to Guild guitars?

[Roland]

1971, maybe 72, I was in the Navy aboard the USS Independence on a Med Cruise. There were three sailors that would get together on the fantail in the evenings with guitars and they would play songs. I thought they were cool. We were in Mallorca Spain and I bought a guitar so I could be a cool kid too. I showed up with my new guitar and one of the fellows taught me a few chords, gave me a Johnny Cash fakebook and I became a folk singer. He happened to play a Guild. He was very proud of it.

Fifty years later, I had taken up guitar playing folk music again in retirement when I got caught up in country/bluegrass. I decided I needed a dreadnaught and went down to the big city looking for a Martin of course. One of the stores I went to was also a Guild dealer. I saw the Guilds, recognized the logo and the look, and lost all interest in the Martins on the opposite wall. I left without a guitar, I'm slow to pull the trigger, and for the next month I couldn't quit talking to my wife about playing the guitar with those guys in the Navy and how that one guy had a Guild and he was the coolest guy I ever knew. So when my birthday came around my wife took me down and bought me a D-20 for birthday present, mostly so I would just shut up about it.

I'm happier with my Guild than I would be with any other brand of guitar. Whenever I play it, it takes me back. I feel like a twenty year old kid, foot loose and free with not a care in the world on the fantail of a carrier in the Mediterranean Sea again.

 

[beecee]

I feel like a twenty year old kid, foot loose and free with not a care in the world on the fantail of a carrier in the Mediterranean Sea again.

Thanks for your service Roland.

Not sure how worry free the sailors are on the Gerald R. Ford.....

 

[Rickenmaxer]

I prefer to "buy American" whenever possible, but I also gravitate to quirky, lesser-known brands, too. I'm a Rickenbacker guy more than being a Fender or Gibson guy. About 10 years ago, I started GASsing for a Gibson SJ-200 maple jumbo but was put off by the price. Research revealed the Guild F-50 as a worthy alternative, and, through this fine LTG site, I started learning the nuances among Guild's Hoboken, Westerly, Corona, Tacoma, and New Hartford variants. I'd always known of Guilds (Tommy Smothers, John Denver, Richie Havens, et al.), but I found a dealer in PA that had a New Hartford F-50R that reinforced I was headed in the right direction. I tracked down an exquisite new-old-stock maple F-50 at a remarkable price and snapped it up, and I've been hooked ever since. As others note, for thousands less than a new SJ-200, I have a maple jumbo that's every bit as good, if not better. (That Gibson moustache bridge is certainly a love it or hate it proposition.)

I've since purchased a number of USA Guild electrics and acoustics (again, often researching the different models on this very site), and I remain impressed by the consistent adherence to superb quality and affordability regardless of where the guitar is built or who its parent company is.

 

[Cougar]

Wow, some great Guild stories in this thread! I was into Epiphone Masterbilts for a while, then got a Takamine GJ72CE-12 and after a little while figured I needed a GOOD 12-string. A buddy over on the Epiphone forum was regretting getting rid of his F412, saying how Guild 12-strings were the best. It didn't take much research to confirm this. So I joined LTG and was in the hunt. It must have been @txbumper57 who mentioned a JF30-12 on craigslist down in Dana Point, California -- a mere 700 miles away. Well, I happened to be going to SoCal to visit family anyway, so I swung by to look at this jumbo Guild. OMG. Give.Me.The.Guitar. And it was a ridiculously low price. Beautiful burst, ebony fretboard, fantastic sound. Still on honeymoon with that guitar!

 

[RBSinTo]

I prefer to "buy American" whenever possible, but I also gravitate to quirky, lesser-known brands, too. I'm a Rickenbacker guy more than being a Fender or Gibson guy. About 10 years ago, I started GASsing for a Gibson SJ-200 maple jumbo but was put off by the price. Research revealed the Guild F-50 as a worthy alternative, and, through this fine LTG site, I started learning the nuances among Guild's Hoboken, Westerly, Corona, Tacoma, and New Hartford variants. I'd always known of Guilds (Tommy Smothers, John Denver, Richie Havens, et al.), but I found a dealer in PA that had a New Hartford F-50R that reinforced I was headed in the right direction. I tracked down an exquisite new-old-stock maple F-50 at a remarkable price and snapped it up, and I've been hooked ever since. As others note, for thousands less than a new SJ-200, I have a maple jumbo that's every bit as good, if not better. (That Gibson moustache bridge is certainly a love it or hate it proposition.)

I've since purchased a number of USA Guild electrics and acoustics (again, often researching the different models on this very site), and I remain impressed by the consistent adherence to superb quality and affordability regardless of where the guitar is built or who its parent company is.

Rickenmaxer,
I've already explained my reasons for purchasing a GAD jf-30.
However, it did need a bit of luthiering work (repairing two cracks in the soundboard), which I had done immediately after I bought it. When I picked it up, the Luthier told me that he also had a Gibson j-200 in for some work, and after playing both guitars decided that the Guild sounded better than the Gibson, whose sound he described as "muddy".
I don't have the ear that others claim, so can't speak to the Luthier's comment, but have not been sorry that I bought the Guild, as it has been everything I wanted in a jumbo maple guitar.
RBSinTo

 

[Curlington]

Playing Guilds now takes me back to my dorm room in the 70's, jamming etc., made possible by Guild. Happy, happy. To this day, they take a lickin and keep on tickin.

 

[chazmo]

... Not sure how worry free the sailors are on the Gerald R. Ford.....

Please refrain from these kinds of posts, guys. Thanks.

 

[Rayk]

Tone !

 

[Boomstick]

I prefer to "buy American" whenever possible

If you think about it, guitars are one of the few things you can actually buy that are actually Made in the US. Cars? Maybe a few are assembled in the US made from mostly foreign made parts, but with guitars the wood might be sourced overseas but even what's a sourced part for most brands like the tuners in many cases are often still made in the US.

 

[HeyMikey]

When I started back up playing guitar after a long hiatus, I focused on acoustic. I had a very nice Martin OM and decided to pick up a MIC Guild 12, looking for that John Denver sound I grew up with. That led me to try a superior F112 and an F30R which I liked better than the Martin. With that awakening and the superb value of used Guilds vs the Martins and Gibsons I was hooked (addicted).

The only down side was trying to find models with my preferred 1-3/4 nut width. I’ve been blessed with owning some truly great Guilds. Unfortunately I ended up selling many because of the thinner necks.

The ones I have left are all simply fantastic. It is going to be very hard to start whittling them down to the final few as I now begin to downsize.

 

[banjomike]

I like the way they look. Often, but not always, the sound and playability matches or exceeds the looks. Sheer joy.

Yeah... me, too.
Ornamentation has always been an important sales element in the American steel-strung guitars, and every good manufacturer does it's own thing with it.
100 years ago, when ornamentation was all hand work of the slowest and most patient kind, "fancy" announced "expensive" to both audience and player. So it was reserved for a company's best instruments.

Martin was always very old-school European with it's ornamentation; their 45 models were actually quite understated, except for the abalone binding. I have always thought the D-45 looked better with the large hexagon block inlays on the fingerboard than their delicate snowflake inlays; the blocks give the necks the extra flash they need to match the body.

Gibson went the opposite direction, with bigger, splashier board inlays, fancy pickguards and colored finishes, but always used very simple binding on everything but a few top models. Gibson always make their necks look fancier than the body, putting the visual elements closer to the brand name on the peghead. Color was the important thing on the bodies for Gibson, not the binding.

Binding is Guild's thing. Guild can do abalone as good as Martin's, and Guild inlays are all modern-simple, but none of the others have ever produced guitars with such extensive and tastetfully intricate binding.
Layered binding is as difficult to do well as abalone binding, and it's something that doesn't jump out and catch a person's eye from across the room. It's an up-close thing that is subtle and more impressive to the player than to the audience.

When the archtop guitars took over the top range, they were all instruments only professional players, the guys who could afford them, used, as they were the only guitars that could produce enough volume to be heard over the brass instruments of the orchestras. Their ornamentation had to be big to be noticed, as the guitarist in an orchestra was always in the back line, next to the bass and drums.
So Gibson dropped the small, intricate fancy fretboard inlays and began using large pearl blocks that gleamed under the stage lights.
They made very modern-looking guitars that matched the Art Deco look of American design very nicely.
And since the 1930s, the highest level of lutherie craft has been the ability to hand-carve the the tops and backs of the archtop guitar so that both vibrate together as complementary pieces.

That's what knocks me out with Guild. Their woodwork has always been equal to the best the others could do, always with the best woods available. Carlo Greco and his crew could carve with the best of them, and they passed their skills on to others in the factory.

But Guild's binding blew me out the door when I first looked at my AA.
Binding a peghead is more difficult than the rest of the guitar. That's why a single layer of white binding is reserved for only the more expensive models in any maker's line.
Gibson's best archtops have 4 layers of binding on their pegheads. My Guild Artist Award has 9 layers of binding on the peghead. Gibson's best has 4 layers on the bodies; Guild has 8, with half of them micro-fine.
To pull that off consistently without a mistake, time after time, is the highest level of detail craft.