This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)

The Guild Guitar Company is a USA-based guitar manufacturer founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a guitarist and music-store owner, and George Mann, an ex-executive with the Epiphone Guitar Company.

The first Guild workshop was located in Manhattan, New York, where Dronge (who soon took over full ownership) focused on archtop jazz guitars, both electric and acoustic. Rapid expansion forced the company to move to much larger quarters, on Newark St. in Hoboken, NJ in what is now the Newman Leather building. ^[1]. The advent of the folk music craze in the early '60s had shifted the company into production of an important line of acoustic folk and blues guitars, including a dreadnought series (D-40, D-50 and, later, D-55) that competed successfully with Martin's D-18 and D-28 models, and jumbo and Grand Concert "F" models that were particularly popular with blues guitarists like Mississippi John Hurt and Dave Van Ronk. Notable also was the Guild 12-string guitar, which used a Jumbo "F" body and dual truss rods in the neck to produce a workhorse instrument with a deep, rich tone distinctive from the chimier twelve-strings put out by Martin. The company continued to expand, and was sold to the Avnet Corporation, which moved production to Westerly, Rhode Island in 1966. As the folk scene quieted, a new generation of folk-rockers took Guild guitars on stage; the most notable Guild performance of that era was the D-40 upon which Richie Havens opened the Woodstock Festival in 1969.During the 1960s, Guild also moved aggressively into the electric guitar market, successfully promoting the "Starfire" line of semi-solid guitars and basses; a number of early West-Coast psychedelic bands used these instruments, notably Jefferson Airplane's bassist, Jack Casady. Attempts at solid-body electrics fell flat in competition with Gibson and Fender; those instruments, eccentric in design, are now viewed as collector items.

The decline of the folk and acoustic market in the later '70s and '80s put severe economic pressure on the company, and instrument specialists generally concede that quality suffered, as it did with Guild's other American competitors in the acoustic guitar market. All Guild production was moved to a factory in Corona, California after Guild was purchased in 1995 by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In 2004, FMIC acquired the assets of Washington-based Tacoma Guitar Company and all American Guild acoustic production has since been moved to Tacoma, Washington, while production of Guild electric guitars was discontinued. In 2005, Fender introduced the Chinese-built Guild GAD series acoustic guitars. Most recently, Guild has moved into a newly acquired facility in New Hartford, CT in 2008, where hand-production of the top-end Guilds has significantly reclaimed the reputation of the company.

For a short time, reissues of 1960s and 1970s Guild instruments were manufactured in Korea under the DeArmond brand name. Models included the Starfire, Bluesbird and Pilot Bass Series. These instruments display the DeArmond inlay on the headstock while the truss rod cover shows the Guild name and logo.

Guild reentered the solid-body fashion in the 1980s with a series of superstrat-style solid bodies including models such as the Flyer, Aviator, Liberator and Detonator, the Tele-style T-200 and T-250 (endorsed by Roy Buchanan) and the Pilot Bass, available in fretted, fretless, 4 and 5-string versions. These guitars were the first Guild instruments to bear slim pointed headstocks, sometimes called "pointy droopy", "duck foot" and "cake knife" for their distinctive shape. Pilot basses were revived by DeArmond in the 1990s (including a 6-string through-neck version with fancy exotic woods) and discontinued along with the DeArmond brand in the early 21st century.

[edit] Users of Guild Guitars

Bryan Adams- F-50R Joan Baez Richard Barone - X-500 (Cool Blue Halo album) George Benson -[2] Paul Bonin - F65CE Matt Donovan - D40,D4, Starfire II Creed Bratton - Bluesbird Roy Buchanan - T-200 and T-250 Jack Casady Johnny Cash - D-60SB Jerry Cantrell - JF55 - MTV Unplugged Eric Clapton F-30,GF-60 Sheryl Crow - M-85 bass Rick Danko- F-50 Dave Davies- Starfire III Nick Drake - M20 John Denver - F-50R Duke Erikson - Starfire III Leslie Feist - 1965 Starfire IV

Tom Fogerty Jerry Garcia - Starfire II Barry Gibb - Songbird BG (stands for Barry Gibb) David Gilmour - F-512 12-string Buddy Guy Richie Havens Roger Hodgson Lightnin' Hopkins- Starfire IV Mississippi John Hurt - F-30 Phil Lesh Gary Lightbody John Mayer Where The Light Is- Trio Set Barry Maguire - F-212 12-string Pat Metheny - D40-C Matt "Guitar" Murphy Pelle Ossler - Starfire Bonnie Raitt- F-50R Steven Page Randy Rhoads

John Rzeznik - many inc. D-55, F65CE, F47M Valencia Brian Setzer - Bluesbird Paul Simon - F-30 and F-212 12-string Johnny Smith Tommy Smothers - D-55 Bruce Springsteen - D-40SB Bob Stander - D-50 and D-50 12-string Stephen Stills - X-500 George Strait - D-100 Kim Thayil - Guild_s-100 Peter Tork - Jetstar Bass Ralph Towner F-312 12-string Dave Van Ronk - F-50R Stevie Ray Vaughan Tom Waits Muddy Waters Gillian Welch - D-25M Zal Yanovsky

[edit] References

1. ^ "Owner's Manual and Warranty, p.2" (PDF). Guild Guitars. 2002. http://www.guildguitars.com/resources/pdfs/Guild_Guitars_2002.pdf. Retrieved 2006-10-11. 
2. ^ Moust, H. (1995). The Guild Guitar Book. GuitArchives. pp. 82, 137. ISBN 0-634-00966-4. . The photograph of Benson accompanying an interview with him in the Guitar Player Book, published in the 1970s, shows him holding a Guild Artist Award with its strings removed.

Hans Moust (1995) The Guild Guitar Book. Hal Leonard Corporation.

[edit] External links

• Guild Guitars, official website
• Westerly Guild Guitars, information on Westerly RI manufactured Guild models