Guild history in short
Serial Numbers Used To Date Martin Guitars First locate the Serial number on your Martin® guitar. (The Model number is not necessary to find the date of manufacture.) Serial numbers are found on the neck block. Looking inside the soundhole and toward the neck you will find the serial number and model stamped on the neck block. 1936 serial numbers started possibly near SN 1 (first documented is SN 25) and reached the 7000s by the time electric instrument/amp production was virtually halted during WW2. Currently I have listed Zephyr Spanish SN 7182 as the last pre-war electric guitar. Tacoma Guitars was an American manufacturing company of musical instruments.It was founded in 1991 as a division of South Korean company Young Chang.Instruments were manufactured in Tacoma, Washington.The company and brand name were later acquired by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.The Tacoma plant closed, and production ceased, in.
| Alfred Dronge was born in Warsaw, Poland on August 16, 1911 as Avram Dronge. In 1916 he emigrated with his parents to the US. In the early 1930s Alfred found a job in the music store 'Silver & Horland' where he learned a lot about music and musical instruments. Alfred himself played banjo and classical guitar and played in a small orchestra and also gave music lessons. In 1936, Alfred partnered with Barney Sagman open a music store at 130 Park Row in New York City. After two years, Sagman was bought out and Alfred began to specialize in repairing used instruments. In 1952 he founded along with former 'Epiphone Guitar Company' executive George Mann, in New York 'The Guild Guitar Company'. After only a few months, Alfred took full ownership of the company. Epiphone's move to Philadelphia brought some of the Epiphone employees into Guild. In 1953, the first hollow body electric guitars were produced in Manhattan, New York. In the following years, the first flat tops and acoustic archtops were built. Due to the rapid growth of the company, production was moved from New York to larger premises in Hoboken, New Jersey. For the growth of the company are factory manager Bob Bromberg, luthier Carlo Greco and Gilbert Diaz partly responsible. In the 1960s folk music became popular in the US. This led Guild to produce a line of acoustic folk and blues guitars with models as D-40, D50 and D-55. Also popular in this decade were the Starfire, Thunderbird and S-100 Polara models. Inspired by Carlo Greco, Guild also started making their first classical guitars. The first model is named after Alfred Dronge's son, Mark. The company continued to expand and was sold in 1966 to the Avnet Corporation, which relocated production from Hoboken to Westerly, Rhode Island. The first guitar (M-20) came from this factory in 1967. The decline in interest in folk and acoustic music in the late 1970s was a heavy economic pressure on the company. A tragic day was May 3, 1972; Alfred died in his private plane that crashed near the airport in Groton. Alfred Dronge was 60 years old. In the 1980's Guild introduced a range of solid body guitars with models as the Aviator, Detonator, Liberator, Flyer and the Pilot Bass (fret and fretless). These guitars were the first Guild instruments with slender pointed headstocks and, because of this shape, were also called pointy droopy, duck foot and cake knife . In 1995 Guild was sold to Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC). In late 2001, Fender decided to close the Westerly, Rhode Island plant and relocate all Guild production to the Corona, California plant. However, production in Corona was short-lived. In 2004 Fender bought the facility from the Washington-based Tacoma Guitar Company. All American Guild acoustic guitar production moved to Tacoma. The production of in the US. Guild made electric guitars was discontinued completely. | Alfred Dronge Carlo Greco In 2008, Fender Guild moved again when it acquired Kaman Music Corporation of New Hartford, Connecticut. Here the handicraft production of all US-made Guilds was resumed. The Guild factory in New Hartford began with production of the top models D-55 and F-50 in 2009. The production was soon increased and acousto-electric versions of these models were also made. In 2014, production in New Hartford was discontinued because FMIC had sold the Guild brand to Cordoba Music Group (CMG), based in Santa Monica, California. Cordoba set up a new factory in Oxnard, California and started production in 2015. The first models were introduced in early 2016, the M-20 and D-20. The more expensive models such as the D-55 followed in 2017. In the early 2000s a new line of Guild acoustic guitars was developed, the GAD series. GAD stands for Guild Acoustic Design. These guitars were based on Guild's earlier acoustic designs but were built in China and are prefixed with GAD. The GAD line was discontinued by Cordoba in 2014. In 2015, the acoustics 'Westerly Collection' and electric 'Newark Street' line were introduced as a tribute to Guild's more than sixty years of rich manufacturing history. |
SERIAL NUMBERS
The tables below provide the most accurate information available to Guild to distinguish date of manufacture by serial number. But as already
mentioned, the documentation of the serial numbers is not complete because there are lists in the past have been lost causing leaving some
gaps in the dating.
1952-1960
1970-1979
1984-1989
1990-1994
1994-1996
1997-1999
| The round label on the inside with a GAD (number) were consecutive but do not refer to the production date of the guitar. The serial number that correlates with the production date can be found on the heel block. For the decoder: only enter the number on the neck block, so without GAD in front.
Guild factory New Hartford
GY = China. YY = Year.(20YY) MM = Month. xx = Production number. KC = Korea Cort. IC = Indonesia Cort. Y = Year.(199Y) KC = Korea Cort. Y = Year.(20YY) xxxxxx = Production number. KWM = Korea World Musical. KSG = Korea SPG. YY = Year.(20YY) xxxxx = Production number. C = Corona, California. MM = Model. (example: UV = F50, PM = D25 ) xxxxxx = Production number. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hamer Guitars are among the finest guitars ever built.
This page is to help you identify the year of any Hamer.
Hamer uses 2 serial numbering systems.
Numbering System # 1
1976 to 1981
#0001 to #0680
A Total of 680 guitars
All Custom Shop guitars or custom made for someone special etc etc.
All of these instruments have a stamped into the wood 4 digit serial number
Numbering System # 2
1977 to Present Day
This system would have at least a 5 digit number with a space between the first and second digit
example 2 2047
This would be a 1982 guitar the 2,047th guitar ever built
not including the 680 custom guitars that used the original serial number system
Epiphone Guitar Serial Numbers
Some samples would be
#7 4871
Made in 1987 the 4,871st Guitar Made
#6 45892
Made in 1996 the 45,892nd Guitar Made
Guitar Serial Number Dating
Other pertinent facts to help you figure year out
If you use the numbers below as a gauge you will be able to put the first number in the correct decade