These will not only help confirm the year of production of your instrument but will also help identify the various specifications that define your guitar, explain where it sits on the evolutionary path and put it into a wider historical context. For those interested in knowing more of the backstory of their guitar there are some useful guides, the best of which are “The Guild Guitar Book” by Hans Moust and “ Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars” by Hans Gruhn. Over the years and due to various changes of ownership some of the necessary documentation has unfortunately been misplaced or destroyed and whilst this has led to a few anomalies and inconsistencies in the dating charts, the information presented here represents the most comprehensive data available for Guild guitar dating.
Guild guitar serial number#
If you are looking to buy or sell a Guild produced piece then the date is vital, this helps provide a provenance or authentic record for the guitar in question and that is one of the key factors which dictates its value.Īt the foot of this page, you will find a long and detailed list regarding the manufacture date of your guitar and it is as simple as looking for the serial number of your guitar on the list and from that, it will tell you the date. Even if you are not planning to sell your guitar knowing a bit about when it was made is a fun thing to do, from there you can read about the history of the company and work out just where your guitar fits into the story.
Go here to find a place to check one out.Dating a guitar is not only a useful and interesting thing to be able to do, in financial and historical terms it is vital. Guild also makes a left-handed model of this guitar. And for those who think of blues, folk or old country players ala Jimmie Rodgers or Joan Baez when they think of a guitar like this, think again, because even the genre-blending Bruno Mars is playing an F-20 Standard.Īccompanied by a nice hardshell case, the MSRP for the F-20 Standard is $2,499, but most retailers will no doubt dicker for several hundred dollars less. The F-20 Standard is very playable, with great action and intonation, and is a lot of fun because it’s so easy to maneuver. The neck joins the body at the 14th fret and has a lower bout of 13 ¾”, ¾” more than what a smaller parlor guitar is technically supposed to have but a little smaller than, say, the Martin 00-18 (the lower bout is the larger bottom half of the guitar body). The guitar has a dual-action truss rod, Gotoh tuners, and bone nut, saddle and bridge pins. The F-20 Standard has a mahogany neck, sides and back, a Sitka spruce top with a gloss lacquer finish, and a rosewood fingerboard and bridge. It was pretty amazing how good the guitar turned out to be, both when strummed and picked and when played fingerstyle.
Guild guitar professional#
But when matched up against studio manager Nick Autry’s 1974 Gibson Hummingbird, the F-20 surprisingly, almost shockingly, held its own in terms of both volume and a highly professional tone against a vintage dreadnought that many players would love to have in their collections.
Strictly an acoustic with no electronics, one would think the guitar shouldn’t have the capacity to be all that loud or have much of a presence without a mic because of its size. The guitar performed well in every room, with a nicely balanced sound that carried well no matter how dead or how small or large the room was. This writer test-drove a new F-20 Standard at a Nashville recording studio, Black River at Sound Stage, in different settings. But for someone who wants to buy a brand new axe, the new F-20 Standards that Guild is making in New Hartford, Connecticut are deceptively sweet-sounding instruments. Guild’s vintage F-20s, like many pre-owned guitars, are seeing renewed interest because they seem to be aging so well. One smaller concert-size guitar that’s been around for decades, but is now getting more attention and is being heavily marketed by Guild, is the company’s F-20 Standard. There was a time when smaller acoustic guitars, modeled after classical guitars, were played almost exclusively (especially by bluesmen, e.g., Robert Johnson’s Gibson L-1) because they were cheaper and easier to tote. One reason is portability, of course, and another is just because smaller guitars are cool. After half a century or more of dreadnought guitars being the rage – partly, of course, because the audiences artists played to grew so much – smaller guitars, such as concert models and parlor guitars, seem to be making more of a comeback (think the Baby Taylor).