The Convoluted History of Guild Guitars

 

Guild Guitars

Recently someone asked me if Guild Guitars were still built in the United States. Well that is a tough question to answer. So I did a little research into the history of Guild Guitars.

Guild Guitars was one of the preeminent guitar brands in the United States. Their acoustic guitars were well built and sounded great. Back in the day, many acoustic jazz artists and Folk Music performers preferred Guild instruments over Martin guitars. 

Alfred Dronge on the Right 

The Guild Guitar Company was founded by music store owner Alfred Dronge in 1952. Alfred Dronge was born Avram Dronge on August 16th, 1911 in Poland. He had immigrated to America with his parents in 1916. Along the way, he took up classical guitar and banjo, but became enamored with American Jazz guitar through listening to Eddie Lange, Nick Lucas, and other players of the day. 

Dronge married Dorothy Abrams in 1934 and they had 2 children: the daughter’s name was Joy and the son’s name: Mark. Dorothy and Alfred met on a Bay Line Cruise ship on the Hudson River where Alfred was playing a regular gig with a small orchestra. He also gave guitar lessons to supplement their income. 

Park Row NYC 1954

In 1936, a small music store called ‘Sagman & Dronge’ opened at 130 Park Row in New York City. Barney Sagman had some money and liked the idea of investment in a music store. Mr. Sagman knew of Dronge as he worked at a neighboring store called Harry Newcorn and Silver & Horland. Sagman was aware of Alfred Dronge’s knowledge of the music industry. 

Though 48th Street had the reputation for the best concentration of musical instruments in New York City, Park Row had the reputation of the place to go to find a bargain. The music store opened. 

Within 2 years, Dronge was able to buy out Barney Sagman and rename the shop: Alfred Dronge Music. He specialized in used instruments and there were plenty of them to be found. He also invested in a repair shop. The need for repairs was clear: he would take in used instruments, repair or restore them and make them available for re-sale. 

One result is that he became familiar with all types of instruments and intimately familiar with what makes an average instrument or what creates an exceptional instrument. Alfred Dronge also got to know most of the representatives from the major American Musical instrument manufacturers by dealing with them from his little shop in lower Manhattan. 

Dronge and Mann

George Mann from Epiphone would linger in New York City as there were so many music shops to deal with. Dronge built a reputation on fairness and always paying on time. He ran his business carefully and built strong relationships that would help him later. 

Sadly, Alfred’s wife, Dorothy, contracted Hodgkins’s disease at the young age of 27 and in 1943 she died at age. Alfred quickly remarried Dorothy’s younger sister Mildred Abrams. This was not unusual in Jewish tradition as it helped ensure stability and family continuity in raising the children. 

War Ration Coupon Book

The war years of 1941 through 1945 became a difficult time for all US industry due to material shortages limiting the availability of new instruments. Dronge was able to focus on used instrument sales to keep the business afloat. 

After the war, Italian accordions had become popular and profitable. They became the new specialty of his shop. I remember an accordion salesman coming around to my parent's apartment when I was only three years old. The upstairs neighbor purchased an accordion for their daughter with the promise of cheap lessons.

Sonola Accordion

Dronge began importing Sonola accordions built by Cupido in Castelfidardo, Italy. This worked so well that Dronge gave up the store in 1948 to concentrate on the import business and built a distribution market. The new business was called: The Sonola Accordion Company. 

Mr. Dronge relocated the offices to 220 Fourth Avenue (Park Avenue South) near Union Square. 

Alfred’s younger brother Louis got involved in the business and stated working at the company at about this time to handle sales. 

John Caruso 

An accordion virtuoso of the time by the name John Caruso had a local accordion studio where he employed 29 teachers for lessons. Alfred and John were friends. John suggested the use of better quality and fuller sounding reeds for the Sonola Student accordions. Adding better models was a great idea as the newer line expense made the imports sound like more expensive models. The new accordions were a hit. Dronge made a small fortune on accordions. 

Epi Strathopoulo

Epiphone was another wonderful guitar manufacturer. It's facility was located in New York City. The company’s president, founder, and namesake Epimanondas (Epi) Strathopoulo died in 1943. The company was taken over by his brothers Orpheus (Orphie) and Nicol (Frixo) Strathopoulo. However, they did not show the interest or drive of their older brother and the business began to decline. 

Frixo left the business in 1947 and his position as Vice President and Secretary was filled by a Mr. George Mann. New ideas were put forward. Unprofitable items were discontinued. 

The Strathopoulo Brothers

The remaining brother, Orphie, did not have patience with the union workers and craftsmen. By 1951 there was a union dispute that shut the factory down for 4 months. To handle the strike, management decided to move out of New York and move the factory to Pennsylvania. This angered the striking workers as they had no desire to move their families to another state. 

This solution also upset George Mann, the new partner. George contacted Alfred Dronge and the two of them worked out a plan to start a new guitar company using the talented craftsmen that Epiphone left behind and eliminate the lengthy and expensive process of training new luthiers. 

Dronge and Mann registered their new venture on October 24th, 1952. The name “Guild” was chosen. It was reminiscent of the craftsmen’s’ organizations “Guilds” of the Middle Ages. This implied tradition and quality. This same name had been used by a San Diego amplifier manufacturer t that was going out of business. 

536 Pearl Street NYC

The two partners had put together a plan for a company but did not yet have a facility. They eventually found space in Manhattan New York at 536 Pearl Street near Foley Square, on the 2nd floor. Six months later, the first guitars emerged. 

The shop Forman was Enrico Cappiello, former 25-year veteran from Epiphone. There were 4 other Epiphone graduates. Dronge’s son, Mark, started work at the factory. 

George Mann left the business, while Alfred Dronge continued. The company initially specialized in archtop Jazz guitars as New York was one of the nation’s music centers. Alfred loved jazz guitar and  knew many of the New York players. 

Johnny Smith Model Guild

Guild concentrated on full-depth jazz acoustic guitars. In 1955 and he began working with Johnny Smith to develop a signature model archtop guitar. Smith had been voted top guitarist by the Downbeat Readers Poll of 1954 and had just the type of credibility that Dronge was looking for. 

Apparently, Johnny Smith was not entirely happy with the Guild design, even though he had been intimately involved in the initial design work. He seemed to feel that Dronge had made too many changes. Guild later changed the Johnny Smith model’s name to Guild the Guild Artist Award. 

Guild was not a union shop and quickly came under pressure to unionize. To escape union interference, Guild moved over the river to Hoboken, New Jersey. The timing was good as they needed more space anyway. 

Guild Factory Hoboken NJ

The new factory opened on November 1st, 1956 at 300 Observer Highway. Guild occupied approximately 6,000 square feet on the 6th floor of the old Neumann Leather Building. Over the next few years, the company expanded from a steadily growing demand from Jazz and the emerging folk boom. 

The ‘Artist Award’ developed for Johnny Smith was immediately accepted as an exceptionally fine instrument. Guild continued to refine its flattops and classical guitars as well as amps and accessories. 

Over the years Guild acquired employees from Martin, Gibson, Epiphone as well as luthiers like Carlo Greco from Italy and Argentina. 

Its sales force was headed by Herb Sunshine a veteran sales manager from Epiphone who had been in the music business since 1926. Guild expanded within the 6-story Neumann Leather Building. In 1960, Guild was registered as ‘Guild Musical Instrument Corporation’ and Dronge took the company public with a stock offering of 325,000 shares at $3 per share. 

During the 1960’s major American corporations and holding companies were advised to diversify. The music business was lucrative and appeared to have a bright future. Suddenly, guitar manufacturing was a desirable addition to corporate portfolios. 

Fender was consumed by CBS, Gibson was bought by Norlin, LoPrinzi Guitars was purchased by AMF. Guild was bought by Avnet for about $5,000,000 in July of 1966.  Dronge retained as president. 

Mark Dronge recognized the influence of the folk boom and the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s. He became responsible for Artist Relations for Guild and spent a fair amount of time in nightclubs in and around Greenwich Village. He moved into the Village to better monitor the scene. He developed relationships with many of the artists and moving forces of the Folk scene and he introduced them to Guild. 

Guild Facility Westerly RI

In 1966, Guild had outgrown the facilities in Hoboken and needed another factory capable of larger runs of lower end guitars. Al Dronge found a factory in Westerly Rhode Island that had been a custom furniture facility and came with 25 experienced woodworkers that were rehired by Guild. 

Remarkably, the foremen from Hoboken were all willing to move to Westerly RI. Dronge simply brought the new employees to Hoboken for a 6-week training session and was able to get the new facility in Westerly up and running with minimal disruption to production. 

To make the commute easier, Dronge had taken up flying and owned a small plane. 

In 1968 Mark Dronge left the company, wanting to strike out on his own. In 1989 Mark Dronge eventually started his own company, DR Strings, which manufactures hand wound guitar and bass strings. Mark passed away in May of 2022. His daughter Annika is now the company CEO.

By the end of 1971, all factory operations had been transferred to Westerly Rhode Island. The future looked bright for Guild 

NY Times Article
About Plane Crash

Sadly on May 3rd of 1972 Alfred Dronge, a director of Avnet, Inc., diversified manufacturing concern, and president of Avnet's Guild Musical Instruments division, was killed when the private plane in which he was flying alone crashed near the airport here. 

Mr. Dronge was only 60 years old and had residences in New York and also had homes in Watch Hill, Rhode. Island., and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

Leon Tell took over as president and shortly after, Neil Lilien became Vice-president. Demand for Guild products was still rising, and the primary problem became skilled labor. Guild had been hiring skilled people from Portugal and Italy and didn’t maintain as aggressive a pay scale as its competitors. 

1971 Guild Electrics

Guild began building solid body guitars in the 1980s with a series of models that have a slim pointed headstock. The distinctive shapes were sometimes referred to as: ‘duck foot’ or ‘cake knife’. The new models included: the Flyer, Aviator, Liberator and Detonator, the Tele-style T-200 and T-250 (endorsed by Roy Buchanan) and the Pilot Bass, available in fretted, fretless, 4 and 5-string versions. 

1970's Guild X-175

In 1973, the company decided in to build archtops only as custom orders. The 1980s saw a resurgence of interest in archtops and Guild responded by returning them to their catalog as a standard line. They continued to be built at their Westerly, Rhode Island facility. 

In mid August of 1986, Avnet sold Guild to a management/investment group from New England and Tennessee. Officers of the newly formed Guild Music Corporation included company President Jerre R. Haskew (previously Chief Executive Officer and President of the Commerce Union Bank of Chattanooga Tennessee), Executive Vice President of Plant and Operations George A. Hammerstrom, and Executive Vice President of Product Development and Artist Relations George Gruhn (Gruhn later left the company in early 1988). 

And this group sold Guild to the FAAS Corporation (Chuck Faas) which changed name to U.S. Music Corporation. 

Unfortunately, the remaining members of the investment group (Gruhn had already left) defaulted on bank obligations in November of 1988, leading to a court supervised financial restructuring. 

U.S Music Corporation

The FAAS Corporation of New Berlin, Wisconsin (renamed to U.S. Music Corporation) bought Guild in 1989.

The Fender Musical Instrument Company (FMIC) bought Guild from U.S. Music Corporation in November 1995. The Westerly factory artisans and workers prepared guitar 'kits' that they shipped to Fender's Corona, California facility. These kits were near-complete production guitars that only needed finishing and final assembly before being sent to retailers 

Fender shut down the Westerly Rhode Island Guild manufacturing facility, after being in production for  almost 30 years in 2001. 

Tacoma Made
Guild F-50M

In 2004, FMIC had also acquired the Washington-based Tacoma Guitar Company. Tacoma Guitars established a manufacturing facility and trained a number of local craftsmen. This was a possible solution to ongoing staffing concerns in Corona. All American Guild acoustic production was moved to Tacoma, Washington. 

DeArmond M-75

To deal with lagging sales of the Guild electric solid body designs, production of American-made Guild electric guitars was simply discontinued. Some of these guitars were then produced in South Korea by the Samick Company, while others were produced in Indonesia under the brand name DeArmond. 

It would not be long before Fender completely shut down production of Guild. 

2009 Guilds Made In
New Hartford, CT

Then in 2008, Fender again moved Guild to a new plant when it acquired Kaman Music Corporation and its small production facility in New Hartford, Connecticut, where hand production of all US-made Guilds resumed in a manner consistent with other high-end, boutique guitar builders. 

The New Hartford Guild facility began production in early 2009, starting with the top-end D-55 and F-50 models. Production quickly ramped up to include most of the popular Traditional Series acoustic guitar models. Acoustic-Electric versions of these models were also made available. 

In the late spring/early summer of 2014, Fender's New Hartford Guild facility closed its doors as the Fender Musical Instrument Corporation (FMIC) prepared to sell off the Guild brand. 

Cordoba M-120e Guild

Córdoba Music Group (CMG), based in Santa Monica, California purchased the Guild brand rights and began setting up a new manufacturing facility in Oxnard, California, led by Gibson alum Ren Ferguson as the VP of Manufacturing and R&D. 

Córdoba started production in late 2015, releasing its first models (M-20 and D-20) in early 2016. Higher-end models like the D-55 were released in late 2017. 

Guild F-512

In February 2023, The Yamaha Guitar Group acquired Córdoba Music Group. Guild guitars are now made in multiple locations: some USA-made models are built in Oxnard, California, while the Westerly Collection is made in China. Newark St. electric guitars are produced in South Korea, Indonesia, and China. 

So yes, Guild Guitars are made in the United States, in Oxnard, California, but Guild Guitars are also made in other countries. 

©UniqueGuitar Publication (text only) 2025

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