Guild Guitar Factories

I think we as guitarists tend to think of guitar factories as glorious magical places where our favorite instruments are born. Reality paints a different picture, however, because guitars aren’t born. Guitars are made, and they’re made in factories.

A random question on a forum made me wonder what the history of Guild factories looks like so I spent far too much time trying to track down addresses and current pictures of the current and past factories where Guild guitars were born made. This article is the result of that research. Read More

Guild Liberator Elite

1988-Guild-Liberator-Elite-TopThe subject of this review is a guitar that I’ve lusted after for years, namely the Guild Liberator Elite. You see, one of my favorite guitars is a Jackson Archtop that I’ve played so much that I want another arched top super-Strat, but that’s a pretty rare thing to come by (at least for US-made Jacksons) so when I discovered that Guild made one, I had to have it. The only problem was that they didn’t make very many of them and they don’t come up for sale very often, so I had to wait. I don’t wait well, but waiting was my only option so after a couple of years of doing so I finally scored one of these rare beauties and had a chance to run it through its paces.

Read More

Guild G300 Tamarack Acoustic Amplifier

I scored this little amp from a new shop in Nazareth, PA which allowed me to drive there and save not only the Paypal fees, but shipping as well. I kind of went in blind having never played a Guild acoustic amp before, but he let me try it and all the knobs appeared to work so I walked out with a good deal on this circa 1993 Guild G300 Tamarack acoustic amplifier.

I tore it apart, gave it a look, fixed the fiddly bits, cleaned up the enclosure and put it through the review process. Let’s see what I was able to learn about this cool little acoustic amp from Guild.

Read More

Guild Timberline Acoustic Amplifiers

Around 1992 or so, Guild introduced the Timberline series of acoustic guitar amplifiers and only made them for a couple of years. Named after various trees and all but one made out of luxurious solid oak, these amps are quite eye-catching in the same way that hardwood encased cane-grill Mesa Boogies are.  These are very classy looking amps and comments on various guitar forums often include statements like “this is the prettiest amp I’ve ever seen.” Well, maybe that’s not often said about the footstool shaped G1000 shown, but the rest get a lot of cosmetic praise.

Sadly, there is very little information about these amps out there and almost every forum post I see about them contains people looking for more information, so I took what I’ve learned and put it together into this article.  Read More