Question about a D40C...

I went to my local GC the other day and they had a used Guild D40C hanging on the wall. A little beat up (according to them it's from the 70s) but played nicely IMO, I'm thinking of making an offer. My question is since I don't know a lot about Guild's are all D40C's Bluegrass Jubilee's? They had it labeled as a Bluegrass Jubilee on the sales ticket but looking at the label inside it just says "D-40C NT" or something to that effect, would it say "Bluegrass Jubilee?" It's also a Westerly which from what I understand is a good thing.

At this point I'm a little skeptical of how GC labels certain items. They had a used Martin D-15 there and they labeled it a "D-15M" which it isn't, I have also caught them mislabeling other things in the past.

Thanks for the help.

atlas01 said:

I went to my local GC the other day and they had a used Guild D40C hanging on the wall. A little beat up (according to them it's from the 70s) but played nicely IMO, I'm thinking of making an offer. My question is since I don't know a lot about Guild's are all D40C's Bluegrass Jubilee's? They had it labeled as a Bluegrass Jubilee on the sales ticket but looking at the label inside it just says "D-40C NT" or something to that effect, would it say "Bluegrass Jubilee?" It's also a Westerly which from what I understand is a good thing.

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Atlas, welcome aboard and sorry for the late reply, can't understand how this was missed by so many.
Here's the deal: D40's were introduced with the name of "D40 Bluegrass Jubilee" in 1963, so technically Guitar Center is correct. In practical use though, the use of names was almost out of style of style with Guild by that time, and wasn't really revived until 2005 in Tacoma.
By THAT time, the Bluegrass Jubilee name was reintroduced to denote a D40 with a red spruce ("Adirondack") top.
I think you may be wondering if that D40c could have an adi top.
After almost 8 years of extensive reading here, I'm satisfied that Guild NEVER used red spruce prior to '05 in Tacoma.
There's never been any evidence prepsented that they mentioned it in any of their lit, and a very compelling reason arguing against it: that NOBODY did because it was flat out overharvested durnig WWII and wasn't available again in the quantities and sizes suitable for guitar building until the late '90's.
That aside, Westerly built guitars overall have magnificent reputations, and the real historical significance of a D40c is that it was the world's first cutaway acoustic dreadnought.
Another thing to know about Guild is that they procured their woods in a way that allowed them to consistently have very high grade tops even if it they were "only sitka".
Hope this didnt come too late to help, but that's definitely worth looking at more closely..

Welcome to LTG! The NT refers to "Natural top" (color). You can check the year by using the Guild serial number list page 3: http://guildguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/history_of_your_guild.pdf

As Al already mentioned, only the D-40 was called Bluegrass Jubilee in the past. The D-40C came with no special name as it was only introduced in 1975, and in 1975 no special names were used for the D-40 either.

Ralf

I like the pointy Florentine cutaway on the D-40C a lot. As Al pointed out above, it was the first time a major guitar manufacturer was able to offer an acoustic with a cutaway.

Make sure that the binding at the point has not separated. It has a tendency to shrink over time and pull apart there, or at the bottom of the curve in the cutaway.

Neal

Neal said:

I like the pointy Florentine cutaway on the D-40C a lot. As Al pointed out above, it was the first time a major guitar manufacturer was able to offer an acoustic with a cutaway.

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The guy who invented it actually posted here before.
Not to sound nitpicky, but it was in fact the world's first cutaway dreadnought. It started a whole market trend toward cutaway acoustics.
From Wiki's Guild page:
"Guild also successfully manufactured the first dreadnought acoustic guitar which incorporates a "cut-away" in the lower shoulder of the instrument, known as the Guild D40-C. In 1972, under Guild's new president Leon Tell, noteworthy guitarist/designer Richard "Rick" Excellente conceptualized and initiated the first dreadnought guitar with a "cut-away". The cut-away feature enables a player to have a more usable higher fret range. Upon the success of the Guild D-40C, other guitar manufactures followed suit. Today, Guild continues to manufacture the D-40C, and now, virtually every guitar manufacturer in the world incorporates this cut-away on their acoustic dreadnought guitars."

Would that suggest that there were F-bodied acoustics with cut-outs before the D-40C? I am not aware of any.

Neal

Neal said:

Would that suggest that there were F-bodied acoustics with cut-outs before the D-40C? I am not aware of any.
Neal

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I'm not aware of any from Guild off the top of my head, but I don't know about "other (American) guys".
I just remembered that it was emphasized by inventor Rick E. that it was the world's first dreadnought cutaway when he posted here.
There were already cutaway Maccaferri Selmers by the '30's for example.
Here's Django with his Selmer:

A little about Maccaferri:
"The guitars Maccaferri designed for Selmer were based on the designs he’d worked on in London and included the internal sound chamber and several other innovations. Among these new ideas were the first sealed, lubricated, self-contained tuning gears, a concept which is now commonplace on almost all new guitars, and the first production single-cutaway guitar.

The cutaway on these guitars was a dramatic right-angle rounded cut on the treble side. Other distinctive features included slotted headstocks, a neck joining the body at the 12th fret, and the large “D”-shaped soundhole with wide marquetry rosettes. Maccaferri’s unique internal sound chamber was available only as an option. Fingerboards were dot-inlaid and featured zero frets. Fingerboards had a small extension over the soundhole to give the treble string a two-octave range. Almost all of these had multiple-bound solid spruce tops with rosewood laminate bodies, with only a few, including at least one harp-guitar, having solid mahogany bodies. Some time after Maccaferri left off his association with Selmer a number of these guitars were also built with birdseye maple bodies.

The first production Selmer/Maccaferri guitars appeared in 1932. In 1933, once production was self-sufficient, Maccaferri left the Selmer operation and returned to his concert career, a move that had been mutually agreed upon by both parties."
A link for the hardcore history buffs among us:
http://www.djangobooks.com/blog/mario_maccaferri_plays_classical_guitar/
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