Show me your Guilds!

For guitars of the straight waisted variety (or reverse offset).
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Larry Mal
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Sep 29, 2020 6:54 am

Telliot wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 6:36 am
Congrats, Larry. It’s beautiful. :-*
Thanks, Todd. It occurred to me that I have some better pictures of it:

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Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.

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PorkyPrimeCut
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by PorkyPrimeCut » Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:28 am

Very nice indeed!

Which tuners are original?
You think you can't, you wish you could, I know you can, I wish you would. Slip inside this house as you pass by.

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Larry Mal
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:45 am

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:28 am
Very nice indeed!

Which tuners are original?
Right! In the first picture, the indoor one, it had some kind of Golden Era open back tuners. Very high quality.

Which I of course neurotically replaced with Gotoh locking tuners, which you see in the outdoor pictures. The only thing I felt I had to do to it, the bone saddle, bridge pins and nut are every bit as good as you could ever want.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.

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seenoevil II
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by seenoevil II » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:16 pm

If you're into Guild (electrics), I can't recommend this site enough. This guy makes very thorough reviews of guilds from all eras complete with measurements and sound clips.

https://www.gad.net/Blog/gads-guilds/

I impulse bought an X-175 Manhattan from the Newark St. Series. I really wanted a Starfire II with DeArmond pups or a IV with those excellent Seymour Duncan HB-1s. But this was an incredible deal (40% of list price) and I've been intrigued by the idea of big jazz box guitar.

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It's clearly well made. Korea is every bit as good as Japan at this point. Though it really needed a good set up. The nut was too high ( though it's well cut and bone), the base of the floating bridge wasn't shaped to the top even a little, and I suspect that there's a high fret in the 12-16 neighborhood.

But the wood work and finish are fantastic. Very loud acoustically. The poly finish is pretty thin. Though, I wish they chose an earlier, more amber colored sunburst to this very red one. It's accurate to the 1960 model, but I feel less appealing.

The 2 Franz pickups are basically just brighter p90s. They moved the bridge pup towards the neck relative to vintage versions. I think this subtracts from its looks, but also really reduces the punch of the bridge sound. It's a very clear, well balanced tone that, to me, is useless. I think they moved it to give the floating bridge more space for intonation, but they went overboard.

I would love to have something with rod magnets instead. Novak narrow range, or DeArmond in a dog-eared cover, or staple top p-90s.

Honestly, I'm still ambivalent about this guitar. I want to like it. It feels like a "me" guitar, but right now it doesn't seem to be living up to its potential.
If it wasn't for disappointment, I wouldn't have any appointments.

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seenoevil II
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by seenoevil II » Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:02 pm

Broke a string, so it's fine to do some work.

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First I refined the base of the bridge. It was slow going, but it's 80% better at least.

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Another sloppy appointment. The stock saddle (that's broken btw) was 12" radius. Which is dumb because the fingerboard is 9.5". So stock, this is set up like a JMJM. You can see the gap between the saddle and the 9.5" radius block.

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After much sanding, you can see that it's much improved. I refined it further after this picture.

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I removed the neck pup to see if I could possibly swap in a DeArmond 2000. I was a little disappointed by the slop here. I was supposed to see that the top was partially routed through. Most concerning though was how the top braces were routed through. Almost half of their width was cut. That must really reduce the strength of these braces.

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I was pleased to see that the Franz is indeed a Franz and not merely a stock p90. Though, it's construction is very similar.

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This is a replacement saddle. I intonated it best I could, but the compensation is way too extreme. I also filed notches into the top. I angled them to break closer to the correct intonation.

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After restringing and setting up, I decided to leave the pick guard off for now. I think it looks good.

I also discovered that there was a high fret or two above the 12th fret. I need to raise the action in order to clear it. It's not much of a problem as it only affects the bass strings above 12. The next time I break a string I'll put some fall away on the upper frets.

Still ambivalent about it. I could see selling it on in the future.
If it wasn't for disappointment, I wouldn't have any appointments.

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Telliot
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Re: Show me your Guilds!

Post by Telliot » Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:09 pm

Well, I suppose I may as well post these here... :whistle:

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The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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