Well, here it is.   1996 Guild DV 52 NT HG.  1) The discerning eye will note that I reversed the 3 and 4 strings when I put new strings on the guitar just before the photo.  I fixed that later.  2)  Scratch on lower bout about even with the top of the bridge on the very end.  Other very minor dings in the finish that show up as light flashes in some cases, but are hard to see with the eye unless the guitar is turned just right. 

The slight scratch is visible in the above photo, but not below.  This shot gives you an idea of how tight the grain was on the spruce back in the Westerly days.

Scratch is visible above.

The back is pretty clean, there are two belt buckle mars.  One shows up in this shot, the other one is very similiar but does not present itself.  Look below the camera flash about twice the distance from the flash to the top and to the right of the herringbone center stripe.  Also note the brown rosewood, a sharp contrast to the greyish-brown rosewood in later years.

There is alot of room in the saddle for adjustments. This guitar plays like a dream all the way up to the 12th fret, I suppose if you spend much time over that you need a cutaway.  This would not be the guitar for you from the 15th to 22nd frets!

This is a way-post Fender take-over DV 52.  It  is an NT HG, but they didn't bother to write it inside the label.  Someone tried to replace the original pickguard with a larger Guild 12 String pickguard and did a sloppy job, covering up the abalone rosette (well, some folks think it is ugly anyway!) not getting it trimmed exactly right, and leaving a smudge here and there in the finish.

The wood grain isn't as tight as the other 52, and has bearclaw marks in it (those aren't scratches!) but they are somewhat disfiguring to my way of thinking.  And the back and sides are that grey-brown rosewood that doesn't do much for me.

Also, they have played with the saddle so that the action is just a bit too low, bringing on more buzz than I like.  But there is also room to improve there.