I think in the 50s and 60s, when Guild was codifying their offerings, koa wasn't that prevalent, even at Martin. It wasn't what people looked for, as it had been earlier in the century.
I remember 8 different Koa models from Guild:I wonder why Guild never got on the bandwagon.
Big pieces of Koa are expensive. Westerly had the wood for the 50 guitars, but I wonder where NH got the wood from. Obviously Tacoma had some, but NH made 100 in total, so that required some good Koa. Maybe Tacoma had sourced some (via Donnie Wade maybe?) just before they got shut down?Interesting that most of those models were made in NH.