To be clear, I'm a HUGE fan of Guild, and have been since I discovered them around 1974. I was also a Guild dealer when I managed a guitar store from '77 - '88. We also were a Martin, Gibson, Ovation, Yamaha, Takamine, Peavey, Fender, Washburn, Electra/Westone dealer and other stuff in that period. And here's my take on all of this.
First, Guild has has incredibly poor marketing no matter which of the many companies that owned them since Alfred Dronge died. All of them have utterly mismanaged that aspect of the guitars. They make arguably the best acoustic guitars there are and even with John Denver at his peak, couldn't leverage that into respect and recognition that lead to sales. FMIC didn't do anything worse than any of the other corporate owners (and there were at least three before FMIC bought them in '95). In fact FMIC did them a huge service by keeping the brand viable for almost 20 YES, TWENTY years. All this claptrap about FMIC buying companies to gut them doesn't fit the facts here. FMIC devoted a lot of promotion to Guild and expanded the dealer base hugely in the early 2000s.
But that was part of the misguided marketing. My experience is that very few people walk into a guitar store looking for specifically for a Guild. They come in looking for a Martin, Gibson, (or Taylor now). The salesperson's job the is to steer them to the right model that gets the sale from them. Just like Fender guitars, you don't have to SELL a Stratocaster, you just have to get them to the one that they'll buy. And that's where FMIC failed Guild- they put them largely into stores that were Fender dealers so the sales staff found it easier to get the customer to the Martins than to actually try to SELL a Guild. My store was successful with Guild because the owner and I loved Guilds and we worked them. But even with that, I'd have people sit and play a maple Guild side by side with a Gibson Hummingbird- they'd agree the Guild was better assembled (fret work done cleanly, glue joints tidy, finish buffed correctly, nut cut right, etc.), sounded better, and played as well or better. But they'd still spend substantially more money to buy the Gibson because it said "GIBSON" on the headstock.
As for Tacoma- I wasn't in retail at the time they started falling apart (before the FMIC purchase) but what I saw and what the two local dealers I wasted time at showed me and shared is that they had real QC issues besides the finishes- sloppy fret work, sloppy attention to details that previously set them apart, and really poor communication with the dealers regarding problems.
The move to New Hartford was a great thing. While I never cared for the sound of Ovation guitars, the US ones were always exceptionally well made. The little things that make the difference between good assembly and great were there- the nuts were cut right. In my experience, only Guild, Ovation, Takamine (which had final set up work done at Ovation at the time), and more recently Lakland ever consistently cut nuts correctly- most companies leave them way too high and are sloppy with the angle and how clean the slots are. The glue joints on Ovations, the fret dressing, the buffing of the fingerboards, the inlays, all were always done with precision and accuracy. The two Guilds I saw from New Hartford were similarly well made. Unfortunately, the whole Kaman Music Group thing wasn't what FMIC wanted to pursue.
The bottom line is that Guild's reputation in the global scene is acoustic guitars. As a new owner to be successful they NEED to make that the priority. From there they will probably need to expand to the retro style electrics that were successful and sellable in the past- there are simply more people interested in buying a new Starfire IV guitar like Buddy Guy's than in buying a Flyer or Aviator (because who remembers anyone that actually played those two in the '80s?). The Starfire basses and the M85 are going to sell a LOT more than the Pilot ever will- especially given that the used market for the Pilot is so woefully undervalued- I don't think anyone can make a US Pilot with the EMG PUPs (and the original passive V/V/T set up) and sell it for a price that would make it profitable against the used market which has the added cache of being "original" and "vintage".
I'm again hopeful for Guild's recovery given what I've read on Facebook and on Lets Talk Guild from the Cordoba management team.
John
