WESTERLY, R.I. (Reuters) - Surrounded by sawdust and the skeletons of unborn guitars, Willie Fritscher worries about the moisture content in his stacks of African ebony.

``African ebony is the hardest wood to dry -- I keep that two years before I use it,'' said Fritscher, stepping inside a sweltering storage room where large fans blow gusts over piles of sweet-smelling lumber.

``I love wood,'' said the 60-year-old manager of the Guild guitar factory in Westerly, a quiet town of 16,000 near the Rhode Island seashore.

Though Guild, with its 130 employees, is not the world's biggest, oldest or most famous guitar maker, it has quietly managed to become the industry's jack of all trades.

The company's diversity is reflected in musicians who have played Guilds over the years -- from 1950s and '60s blues legends Lightnin' Hopkins and Buddy Guy to rockers like Bonnie Raitt and the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards to folk-influenced troubadours Paul Simon and the late John Denver to alternative-rock heroes like Kim Thayil of the 1990s band Soundgarden.

Despite the respected brand name, the company suffered years of financial and ownership turmoil, including bankruptcy in 1988. Today, the 47-year-old company is making a comeback of sorts. Since being acquired in 1995 by Scottsdale, Arizona-based Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the market leader in electric guitars, Guild's sales have doubled to $10 million.

It takes from one to four months to make a guitar, after the wood has been properly aged or dried. While Guild's guitar-making process has changed very little over the past 30 years, production at its Rhode Island factory has increased to 55 guitars per day from 20 per day a few years ago.

Guild is churning out 43 different guitar models, which retail for anywhere between $800 (for the D-4 model) to $6,400 (for the Artist Award jazz guitar).

``It's the last factory in America where different styles of guitar -- archtops, flattops, solid-body electrics -- are all built together down the same (production) line by the same hands,'' said Bill Acton, marketing manager for Guild.

GUILD TRADITION BEGAN WITH JAZZ

Guild was founded in New York City in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a Polish-born guitarist and music-store operator. Its first products were jazz guitars.

In 1956, the company moved its manufacturing plant to nearby Hoboken, New Jersey. Eleven years later, Dronge chose Westerly as the new factory site, lured by the presence of Portuguese and Italian immigrants with woodworking skills developed in the furniture industry.

After Dronge's death in a 1972 plane crash, Guild went through a series of ownership changes as it continued to produce a variety of folk, rock and jazz guitars.

While Guild has long been respected in guitar circles, it lacks the legendary status of its competitors C.F. Martin & Co. (the Nazareth, Pennsylvania-based company founded in 1833) and Nashville, Tennessee-based Gibson Musical Instruments (whose founder, Orville Gibson, began selling guitars in 1894).

And while Jimi Hendrix popularized the Fender Stratocaster and Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck made the Gibson Les Paul an equally exalted instrument, Guild was never firmly linked in the public mind with a certain guitar or superstar player.

``The interesting thing about Guild is that there's never been a real golden era, where you could say, 'Oh gosh, these 1950s Guilds were the (best) ones,''' said Eric Shoaf, a Rhode Island-based writer for ``Vintage Guitar'' magazine.

``But there's also never been a period of time when the quality fell, as it did at these other (famous) companies,'' Shoaf said.

VINTAGE GUILDS HIP AGAIN

Some forgotten Guild models became hip again in the 1990s, when a new generation of musicians embraced them. The best example is the S-100 solid-body electric, which ceased production in the early 1980s, but rose from the dead thanks to Kim Thayil of Seattle grunge band Soundgarden, who owned a 1973 model.

Guild started making the S-100 again in 1992, after Thayil requested a new one. ``He pretty much single-handedly revived interest in it,'' Acton said of Thayil. ``We actually blueprinted the reissue from his '73,'' Acton said.

Before Thayil, one has to go back to 1960s band the Lovin' Spoonful to find a top rock band whose lead guitarist played a Guild solid-body electric (the Spoonful's Zal Yanovsky played the decidedly odd-looking Guild Thunderbird).

``Guild was always known for good guitars in a lot of areas, but they never had a signature guitar that people said, 'They make the best one,' except for the flattop 12-string,'' said Jay Pilzer, a history teacher in Fayetteville, Tennessee, who sells vintage Guilds via his Web site (http://www.guildguy.com)

``The big issue is that Guild built a good everything,'' Pilzer said. ``Nobody else did. You cannot point to an American guitar company that has a solid reputation in every sort of guitar (other than) Guild.''

Pilzer, who has been in love with Guild since he got a Brazilian rosewood D-50 as a high-school graduation present in 1964, said there is a small but fervent collectors' market for vintage Guilds in the United States, Europe and Japan.

``Five years ago, I was the only guy who bought (old Guilds),'' Pilzer said. ``Now, I have to fight for them.''