RENAISSANCE

Renaissance guitars was founded by John Marshall, Phil Goldberg, and Dan Lamb in the late 1970s. Marshall, who played guitars in a number of local bands in the 1960s, was friends with local luthier Eric Schulte. Schulte, a former apprentice of Sam Koontz (Harptone and Standel guitars) taught Marshall guitar-building skills. In 1977, Marshall began gathering information and building jigs, and received some advice from Augustino LoPrinzi on a visit to New Jersey. Goldberg was then a current owner of a northern Delaware music store, and Lamb was a studio guitarist with prior experience from Musitronics (the effects company that built Mu-tron and Dan Armstrong modules). A number of wooden guitar and bass prototypes were built after the decision to use plexiglass was agreed upon.
In 1979, the then-fledgling company was experiencing financial troubles. Marshall left the company, and a new investor named John Dragonetti became a shareholder. Unfortunately, the company's financial position, combined with the high cost of production, did not provide any stability. Renaissance guitars closed down during the fall of 1980.
In a related sidenote, one of the Renaissance employees was guitarist/designer Dana Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe went on to form his Dana Guitar Design company, and was involved in guitar designs for St. Louis Music's Alvarez line in 1990. One awarding-winning model was the Dana Scoop guitar, which won the Music Retailer's Most Innovative award in 1992. Production is estimated to be around 300 to 330 instruments within three years. Serialization for Renaissance instruments has one (or two) digits for the month, two following digits for the year, and the remainder of the digits indicating consecutive production (thus, M[M]YYXXXX). Source: Michael Wright, Guitar Stories, Volume One.