1987 Guild D60 with clear pickguard

Hi All,

Hi, I am new to the Forum. I have recently decided to sell some of my guitars. I have a "shop" on Reverb and have been letting go of some of my guitars there, but I was hoping that some of you could help me with one of them. I have a 1987 D60-NT that I bought in Australia in the mid to late 90s. It is one of the guitars I want to sell but I have no idea what it is worth. Here are some photos on Google Drive if you want to check it out (toggle to grid view):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16jppYfUJawAScpuFBbFVTgKcb3Ahiu32?usp=sharing

These guitars appear to be quite rare. Here is what I know about it.

There were apparently only 308 D60s built between 1987-1990. The 1987 price list for Guild lists the D60 at $1,395. The building of the guitars was supervised by Guild Master Luthier Kim Walger. The D60 was designed by Kim and vintage guitar guru George Gruhn. My guitar has AAAA Sitka Spruce top, highly figured East Indian Rosewood on back and sides, ebony fretboard with unique D60 diamond slotted inlays, mahogany neck, clear pick guard, Grover tuning machines, hard maple bridge, Guild pearl inlays on headstock, herringbone purfling like an HD28, and herringbone around the soundhole rosette. Gruhn actually got Guild to lighten up on their (over-braced) tops and shift the X brace forward.

It has a few shallow pick scratches on the top, most if not all of which can be buffed out by a good Luthier. And there is a little pick wear at the bottom of the soundhole. Otherwise clean - no buckle rash, dings, etc. I play it occasionally but it has spent most of its life in a case and I have had my Luthier check it every few years. I have never seen another one of these guitars in person, and I have never even seen a picture of one with the clear pick guard, which I love because the spruce top is so beautiful. I never changed the bridge saddle, nut or tuning machines so assume they are original.

Johnny Cash played a sunburst version of the 1987 D60.

Interestingly, Westerly Guild Guitars shows the D60 as having curly maple back and sides, but I have never seen nor heard of one like that.

Would anyone venture a guess regarding what I should ask for it? It plays and sounds excellent.

I appreciate any guidance you might be willing to give me.

Cheers - Scott

Sounds like a nice one. Gruhn was a visionary.

Thx for the history lesson. Guild guitars can be pretty complicated. I now know more about D60 than before, a lot more

I'm guessing the Cash version is worth some pretty serious cash?



If anybody can upload pics, I can't get GDrive to open on our rather pathetic Sat internet.

Welcome to LTG, Scott! I will wait for others more informed than me to chime in - but I have never seen any acoustic Guild with a clear pickguard like that. I'm guessing that is not original, but it is admittedly a "guess".

walrus

Thanks, Guildedagain:

If others have trouble with my GDrive link I can try to do something else. Best - Scott

Sweet! Here's my wild guess: $1,995.00

walrus said:

Welcome to LTG, Scott! I will wait for others more informed than me to chime in - but I have never seen any acoustic Guild with a clear pickguard like that. I'm guessing that is not original, but it is admittedly a "guess".

walrus

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Thanks, Walrus! It certainly shown no signs of having had a different guard on it prior to the clear one.

dreadnut said:

Sweet! Here's my wild guess: $1,995.00

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Thanks, Dreadnut!

Welcome to LTG . . .

A long-time LTG member, known for buying & selling many guitars, recently purchased an '87 D-60 (as described in the following thread). Purchase price not advertised, but based on the Reverb listing it might have been roughly $1,500 including shipping. I would consider that to be a fairly competitive price. Perhaps yours could be sold for a couple hundred $ more?

https://www.letstalkguild.com/ltg/showthread.php?200814-NGD-D-60-Rosewood

Also, I believe this was a model that was produced at two different times with different woods; once with rosewood back/sides, & once with maple, as mentioned in your first post.

Don't know if I can link to a Google Drive photo, but let's try anyways:





Hmm. Picture link not working, but maybe someone else knows how to do so.

Hi All,

Thank you for your responses so far! Walrus, I too wonder about the origins of the clear guard, which I like a lot. Either it came with it, or came w/o a guard, or the guard was changed out very early as there are no "tan" lines from a different original guard. Dreadnut, yeah, I was thinking about ~$2K. We'll see what others think. Geoguy, I did see that thread about the NGD-D-60-Rosewood and saw it on Reverb before starting this thread. Regarding GDrive, assuming that my link takes you there, you can look in the upper right and see a symbol that looks like a window with 6 panes. Click that to get the grid view of the images. Let me know if my link is not sending you to the folder called Guild D60.

Cheers and thank you all so much - Scott

If the OP is in Australia, the prices will be quite different there than in the US...perhaps some of our down under members can chime in.

Sorry, GuildFS4612CE - I am living in Maine, USA now. Was in OZ doing my PhD back then. What a wonderful country! As I recall i paid something like $1,800 AUD back then, but can't remember for sure. Cheers - Scott

Experimenting with the upload capability. I looked at Google Drive, picked a representative picture, downloaded it and then uploaded it. It has the expected orientation on my disk and on Google Drive so I don't know how it got twisted.

Welcome, BTW and sharing photos housed with Google is not easy.

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Hi All,

Sorry to be such a newbie on this site. I would like to share these pics with you. Is there a preferred method - like photobucket? I below to a number of forums, but have never had to share pics before. I am happy to explore what the rest of you find to be easy. Cheers - Scott

Forgot to mention that - I can see the photos on the Google Drive fine...

walrus

I had one of these -- sold it when I got my D66. (It was a toss-up -- both are really nice guitars!) Recommended.

fronobulax said:

Experimenting with the upload capability. I looked at Google Drive, picked a representative picture, downloaded it and then uploaded it. It has the expected orientation on my disk and on Google Drive so I don't know how it got twisted.

Welcome, BTW and sharing photos housed with Google is not easy.

- - - Updated - - -

Click to expand...

You have to be logged in to LTG to see this pic.

scottej said:

Hi All,

Sorry to be such a newbie on this site. I would like to share these pics with you. Is there a preferred method - like photobucket? I below to a number of forums, but have never had to share pics before. I am happy to explore what the rest of you find to be easy. Cheers - Scott

Click to expand...

Scott, there is an FAQ thread in the FAQ section about posting photos. They (currently) have to be hosted by an external site (we don't recomment photobucket any more because it's not free; I use imgur). Soon, our new site admin is going to enable photo attachments. Anyway, welcome aboard.

IMHO you can’t accurately value a guitar just on looks. To me, cosmetic condition is only the starting point. What is also very important is the structural condition, current and projected playability for whatever duration of time is important to the buyer. Ultimately for me it is a trade off on the purchase price and the amount of work that I will want to put into it to suit my needs now and if (when) I decide to sell it.

I’ve seen pristine safe queens that need $1000+ worth of playability work. I want to check the neck angle, action & saddle. I want to see the condition of the fretboard, frets and bridge. I want to know if the truss rod works properly. I want to know if there are any cracks, loose braces, repairs or other issues.

I would much rather pay the same amount for a guitar that has a little honest cosmetic wear than for the same that looks mint but is getting close to needing a neck reset, saddle, nut and bridge reset. Then again I’d pay more for the mint looking guitar that needs nothing.

If you are not familiar with these things, a good source is frets.com. Go to the index and browse around. For checking neck angle, action and saddle issues scroll down to acoustic guitars about mid way down.

Hello

Either the guitar OR TRC is upside down - and because it dwells down under - I say it is the guitar - so most importantly - TRC-position is correct - maybe . . .