Guild™ Celebrates Distinguished 50-Plus Year History
In the April 1953 issue of Musical Merchandise Magazine, a brief ad appeared marking the debut of a brand-new company.
A new corporation, known as Guild Guitars Inc., with headquarters at 220 Fourth Ave., New York, N.Y., has been formed to manufacture high-quality guitars, including Spanish and Hawaiian electric - solid wood body electrics, amplifiers, cases and strings.
With this rather modest announcement, the Guild™ company began its rise from a small Manhattan guitar workshop to one of the world's premier makers of high-quality acoustic (and several popular electric) guitars. Registered in October 1952, the fledgling Guild Guitars company set up a 1,500-square-foot manufacturing facility on the second floor of a factory at 536 Pearl St., not far from where Al Dronge's Park Row music store used to be in the 1930s and '40s.
The Al Dronge Era
Guild founder Alfred Dronge and plant manager Jim Deurloo in the Westerly, R.I. plant.
Avram "Alfred" Dronge—"Al" to many—was born in Warsaw, Poland, on Aug. 16, 1911. His family left Warsaw for Paris in 1914, and left Paris for New York City in 1916. He practically grew up in Manhattan's Park Row music stores, becoming an accomplished banjo player and guitarist along the way. Dronge gave guitar lessons and played professionally in New York clubs and cruise ships, and opened his own successful Park Row music store in the mid-1930s. An astute, hard-working and well-liked businessman, he sold the store in 1948 and amassed a small fortune in the late '40s and early '50s importing and distributing accordions.
Guild's genesis was simple. In 1952, Dronge's friend George Mann suggested that the two men start a new guitar company. Another friend of Dronge's, Gene Detgen, suggested the name "Guild." And that was that. Guild was in business, with Mann and Dronge as president vice president, respectively.
The first catalog and pricelist, from April 1954, referred to Guild as "The Stradivari of Guitars," with a small selection of arch-top electric and flat-top acoustic guitars. Arch-top acoustics were added to the line in 1955, by which time Mann had left and Dronge had taken the company's helm.
Healthy sales, vigorous growth and Dronge's vehement opposition to what he called "inappropriate union interference" meant Guild needed new digs with more room; the factory was consequently moved to several thousand square feet on the sixth floor of the Neumann Leathers building, across the Hudson River in nearby Hoboken, N.J.
Guild flourished in the rest of the '50s and in particular throughout the '60s. Although they had started out as a line of mainly jazz guitars, Guild's popularity and solid reputation spread quickly, and over the years its instruments found their way into the hands of high-profile rock, pop, blues and jazz guitar heroes including Johnny Smith, Duane Eddy, Roy Orbison, John Lee Hooker, Merle Travis, Paul Simon, Keith Richards, Dave Davies, George Benson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Richie Havens, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Miller, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Doc Watson, Ry Cooder, George Strait and so many other acclaimed artists.
In 1966, the Guild Musical Instruments Corporation was bought by electronics giant Avnet Inc., and, having once again outgrown its factory, was moved to a new plant in Westerly, R.I., where operations remained for almost three decades. Sadly, Dronge perished in May 1972 when the small aircraft he was piloting—on the way to the Guild's Westerly plant—crashed in Connecticut. Even with such a tragic loss, Guild guitars continued on as popular, distinctive and highly regarded instruments.