Guild Guitar Company - Guild Import Brands

Guild Import Brands

Guild has had four primary import guitar lines, which are imported from China.

In the early seventies, Guild formed import brands for acoustic and electric guitars made outside the United States. Madeira Acoustic and Electric Guitars were import guitars based on existing Guild designs, but manufactured in Asia. They are characterized by their substantially unique pickguard shape and differing headstock.

Similarly to Madeira, Burnside Electric Guitars were Guild electric guitar designs (typically of super-Strat delineation) that were manufactured outside the United States. The headstocks on these guitars read "Burnside by Guild." Both brands were discontinued in the early '90s.

After Fender purchased Guild in the mid '90s, reissues of some Guild electric guitars were manufactured in Korea under the DeArmond brand name, which Fender also owned the rights to. Import reissue models included the Starfire, X155, T400, M-75 Bluesbird, S-73, and Pilot Bass series. On the front of the headstock, these instruments display the DeArmond logo above a modified version of Guild's Chesterfield logo. On early production versions, the truss rod cover is stenciled with the word 'Guild' stylized and the DeArmond reissue model number, and the back of the headstock is stenciled with 'DeArmond by Guild' above the guitar's serial number. Later production versions drop all references to the Guild brand name except for a modified Chesterfield headstock inlay on most models. The DeArmond line also included other less expensive models similar in design to the Guild reissues and manufactured in Indonesia. The DeArmond brand was discontinued in the early 2000s.

Also in the early 2000s, FMIC created a new line of Guild acoustic guitars called the GAD-series, which stands for "Guild Acoustic Design." As with the other import lines, these guitars are based on past and present Guild acoustic guitar designs, but are built in China. All of these models are designated with a 'GAD' as a model prefix. These guitars feature poly finishes (as opposed to traditional nitrocellulose lacquer on US models) and nondescript wood grading. Interestingly, FMIC did not choose to create this line under a different brand name, but left it as a new series of guitars from Guild. This choice has caused confusion, as it marks the first time that an import has actually donned the Guild brand name, which had previously only been used to describe US-made guitars. Because of this, it is no longer immediately clear if a Guild-branded guitar is a US-made model or an import, although the GAD models usually have unique ornamentation. The current product portfolio of GAD-series guitars is larger than Guild's US-built Traditional Series.

The 2011 GAD models have new features, looks, and model numbers. These new GAD-series Guild guitars can now also be identified with a number 1 as the first number in the model number. For example, a US-built F-50R's GAD-level copy would be called an F-150R. Similarly, a US-built F-512 would be an F-1512 as a GAD copy.