Could well be Craig. That's a slant I hadn't thought much about and there's probably more than a grain of truth in it!!! I can understand why your D35 still sounds good.....it's hand built!

Drifting off topic a bit which happens a lot around here, isn't it funny how so many of us wind up with a guitar that we originally didn't want or caused us problems? I had traded and swapped guitars around for years, had a couple stolen, and all that until I finally reached a point where I was happy with the three I had which included a Guild 12. So around 1980 I'm living in chattanooga and I come home to find myself cleaned out of all the stuff that can be easily sold....TV, stereo, and of course my guitars. I wasn't real flush at the time and there was this little music store going out of business where I bought this Takemine for a hundred bucks. Solid woods, D-18 copy, which eventually became known as the "Lawsuit Taks" because Martin had a shitfit.

It sounded good and I figured it might age a bit better, but my intention was to sell it as soon as I could start buying what I wanted again. Those Taks aare beautiful copies that frankly look better inside and out than Martin's of that period or most others for that matter. Long and short of it is that I've bought and sold a boatload of other guitars since then, but I could never quite get rid of the Tak and today it's still my "mostfavorite" guitar of any I have ever owned.

Anyway, thanks for the input on Fender and Guild. BTW, I also looked at one of the Fender "Squier" line of acoustic basses and that sucker was pretty decent too with the Fender electronics and a damn good price! Some of the Squier electric solids have gotten some flak, but this acoustic bass looked really good, clean construction, good woods.

Spaw