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Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Bob Wootton

“Like Gretsch’s Duo Jet, it was surely spurred by Gibson’s success with the Les Paul”: The mysterious history of the Guild M-75 Aristocrat, the blue-blooded hollowbody played by John Lee Hooker, John Mayer, St. Vincent and Dan Auerbach

Gibson Guild Dan Auerbach John Lee Hooker John Mayer Aristocrat Gretsch Les Paul Adam Gasson United States
Guild M-75 Aristocrat.

Guild Guitars co-founder Alfred (real name Avram) Dronge was born in Poland in 1911 and emigrated to the US, via a two-year stay in Paris, in 1916, settling in New York City.

As an accomplished musician, he was first a guitar teacher and club player, before opening a music store in the mid-1930s in Manhattan’s Park Row. After some persuasion by friend and ex-Epiphone executive George Mann, Dronge and Mann founded Guild Guitars Inc in October 1952. It would be neither the first nor the last time a retailer or repairer saw opportunity in manufacture.

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