❌SOLD❌ Guild D40SB Steel String Dreadnought Guitar Sunburst, 1975

The Guild D40SB was part of a line built as ‘Bluegrass Jubilee’ models between 1963 and 1992, popular with bluegrass, country and folk players for their volume, presence, tone and reliability.

The Guild Guitar Company was formed in New York City during 1952 by musician Alfred Dronge and ex-Epiphone sales executive George Mann, and employed many workers from the Epiphone company. Epiphone’s founder, Epi Stathopoulo had died in 1943, leaving the management of the company to two of his brothers. Unfortunately this was not a smooth transition and labour strife appeared, and in 1951 workers struck for four months. In response, the company moved its operations from New York to Philadelphia. Many workers chose not to relocate, and Guild was born. The original shop was in New York City, but sales were very good and Guild expanded into a much larger shop on Newark Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1966, the company was sold to Avnet, and moved again to Westerly, Rhode Island. In 1995, Guild was again sold to Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and production moved to Corona, California because of issues modernising the Westerly plant. In 2008, Guild moved again to New Hartford Connecticut – the location was the former Kaman Music Corporation shop, recently purchased by Fender. Finally, in 2014, Fender sold Guild to the Cordoba Music Group and production moved again to Oxnard, California with Ren Ferguson as VP of R&D. Ren Ferguson had to that point been leading the Gibson Acoustic shop in Bozeman, Montana.

The D40 as a model is no more, but has been reborn in the new Guild line as the D140.

This Guild D40SB was built during 1975 while the company was in Westerly, Rhode Island. It has definitely been used as its maker intended, and has the wear and repairs to show for it! The Guild D40SB is a dreadnought guitar (hence the D) with 40 level materials and appointments and a Sunburst finish top (the SB in the model number). Similar in concept to the Martin D-18, the Guild D40 pairs a Sitka Spruce top with tropical Mahogany for the sides, back, body blocks, back bracing and neck, with Rosewood for the bridge and un-bound fingerboard. Single layer binding goes around the top, and the rosette is made of purfling layers.

This guitar has been played a lot and has had an amount of necessary service performed. It has been refretted recently, with a new bone nut and saddle added. A crack in the top has been repaired and cleated, and there is some finish touch up around the lower top bout on the bass side – the player’s forearm apparently wore through the outer layer of the sunburst. The finish on the back and neck is also worn consistent with extended playing.

That extended playing also opened up the tone – this is a good sounding guitar, very responsive with lots of representation throughout the harmonic range.

A hard shell case by TKL (who make cases in Canada for many companies including Gibson) is included.