Talked to the new Benelux Guild distributor briefly...

And managed to get a little bit of news...

-The "standard" acoustics appear to be out of the line for now.

-He said there was talk of a centerblock M75, and possibly a Thunderbird reissue in the Newark street line.

-over here, prices are up for everything Guild by about 10%

Huh. Wasn't expecting the prices to go up. Not surprised about the standards though.

Price thing might just be Europe only, I don't know!

THanks for the update, Walter. At this point, I think they're just selling off residual stock from Fender. I wonder what'll happen once the ball starts rolling under Cordoba's locations.

I really hope prices don't go up too much.

chazmo said:

At this point, I think they're just selling off residual stock from Fender.

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As far as anything US made goes, yes, obviously. But the new distributor over here had already gotten GAD and Newark St guitars post-FMIC ownership.

Really?! That's interesting news. I wonder how the two companies are working this... Let us know if you hear anything further, Walter. Best wishes!

Walter Broes said:

And managed to get a little bit of news...

-The "standard" acoustics appear to be out of the line for now.

-He said there was talk of a centerblock M75, and possibly a Thunderbird reissue in the Newark street line.

-over here, prices are up for everything Guild by about 10%

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"standard"- great, I will never buy one anyway.
M75, OK
Up 10%- too bad, they might price themselves right out of the market!

It's likely a matter of supply and demand, but we should know very soon as Cordoba/Guild resume full production.

Don't harsh too much on the Standard Series.

It provided some of us our introduction to New Hartford Guilds, which led to additional purchases up the product line.

And there are quite a few Standards that can go toe to toe with the more upscale Traditional Series instruments.

All it takes is one listen to the video online of the F-30 Standard being played in harmony with a D-55 and F-512 to demonstrate that it belongs.

Neal

Given that CMG is starting from scratch with a new facility and a new production crew, it's inevitable that production will be limited for awhile. And, that being the case, it probably makes sense to begin with higher-margin products. But I do hope we see the Standard Series, or something like it, return at some point. Without it, the price gap between the GADs and the least expensive US-made Guild is enormous; it would be good to offer buyers an option somewhere in the middle, even if it's toward the higher end. (I also dream of the D25's return--they have the arch-back press, after all). And I really like my Standard Series guitars, especially the D50 (the sound of which gets compliments regularly--and it's all the guitar, not my playing). If it's not as nice as my F47R, it's still a really nice instrument at a more affordable (if still expensive) price.

F-50 Standard here! The maple is so pretty that the satin doesn't do it justice...

F-212XL Standard here! NH didn't do a Traditional series version of this guitar. Maybe the Cordoba folks will.

I don't know what Guild was thinking with that matte finish on the Standard guitars. IMO it looks cheap, which was tough to reconcile with the sticker prices. Just another nail in Fender/Guild's coffin.

I would have been fine with the matte finish if the maple didn't have some quilting going on!

charliea said:

I don't know what Guild was thinking with that matte finish on the Standard guitars. IMO it looks cheap, which was tough to reconcile with the sticker prices. Just another nail in Fender/Guild's coffin.

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I'm the odd ball, I guess - I've always felt the high gloss finish looked almost too ostentacious/tacky, and preferred the satin/matte/hand-rubbed finishes. In fact, several times I've seen some Guilds for sale that I was 90% close to pulling the trigger on, but the gloss finish held me back.

Pretty sure satin is just a way of not showing too many imperfections,High gloss will show all imperfection.:rugby:

I never got a chance to get an answer from the horse's mouth, but I suspect the reason was just to speed up the finishing process -- not to hide wood imperfections. Those who never attended an LMG event might not be aware how time- and labor-consuming it is to apply a gloss, nitrocellulose lacquer finish to a fully-assembled guitar. To my knowledge, New Hartford did not change that process much (if at all) on the Traditional series as they knew that customers value this highly.

The Standard series was an experiment by New Hartford to try to lower expense and increase throughput, and finishing was one of the areas they focused on. For one thing, the necks and the bodies were finished separately (first) and then joined (later). My early Standard has a satin neck and a gloss body. They shifted to satin bodies at some point later. All along, they were using different wood filler on the Standards which allowed faster curing of the NCL.

At some point, I suspect they would've tried a line with a polyester finish, but this never happened. I suspect they wanted to avoid competing with the MIC GAD line, since bringing the price down to those levels would've been impossible in the US.

When fhe line was first started, while the final finish was nitro, the initial filler used was synthetic. Sometime between seeing the protos at LMG I and LMG III the process changed to all nitro.

Chaz is right, they were trying to speed up the process, as Frank U. explained to a small group of us at a picnic following LMG I.

chazmo said:

Those who never attended an LMG event might not be aware how time- and labor-consuming it is to apply a gloss, nitrocellulose lacquer finish to a fully-assembled guitar.

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Never been to LMG, but I've finished two telecasters in Nitro, and yes, absolutely : it's a very time and labor consuming job.