Guild S-70

Hi!

This is my forst post here! I've been a few month reading your posts and now I've decided to start to participate. I have a 1997 black Guild S-100 which plays great and has a great tone. But I've always wanted some strat tones and the S70 looked like a classy alternative to a Strat. Recently I've found one being selled in my country so... I bought it!

It is a 79 example (according to the serial number), It's missing the two mini-switchs and probably all the pickup covers are not original, if not the pickups themselves. All the photos I've seen from S70 have cream cover pickups.

I've notice that there aren't much references about this model in this forum. As far as I concer it was made during the end of the 70's and the begining of the 80's. AndI know there was a mahogany body version and a alder body one.

Is there any S70 owner here? What can you tell me about this guitar?

Here you have some photos from the ebay seller.


[IMG:472:709]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/ab_3.jpg[/img]
[IMG:472:709]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/b1_3.jpg[/img]
[IMG:709:472]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/e4_3.jpg[/img]
[IMG:567:378]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/c3_3.jpg[/img]
[IMG:709:472]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/6b_3.jpg[/img]
[IMG:709:500]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y101/breogan79/guitarras/s70/4e_3.jpg[/img]

Nobody? :? :?

Well, then I may be the first one to have this guitar in this forum... The guitar just arrived today, It is in a decent shape. The finish has dings and scratches here and there but it is a good shape. The neck is between a "D" and "C" a bit narrow. The action allowed is low and plays quite fast.

The guitar is plays loud when unplugged, on the warm side. Plugged has definitive strat character to it. I've been playing the guitar for 15 min, loved the tone...

Electronic need a mayor revision, since it is missin two mini-switches, pots are a bit stcrachy, pickup covers aren't original and doesn't allow the bridge pickup to be set near the strings. Pickups may not be original, but they look old and use cylinder mags... which is a good thing.

I'll post something about the quality of the tone when I've played it a bit more.

I am already thinking in installing a Bigsby... What do you think about it?

Hi breogan,

I am also the owner of a S-70. I find the S-70 to be one of my favorites. Great neck and I like the dirty sound of the stock tan covered Dimarzio pickups. However I find my PUPs squeal a bit. I am planning to re-pot the PUPs one of these days.

The guitar I purchased was all stock but had some sections of the pickguard broken off. I made some repairs to the pickguard and decided to make a few more modifications. In particular I found that the stock wiring didn't maximize the possible tonal combinations of the 3 PUP configuration. The stock S-70 has a 5-position switch and 2-phase switches. The 5-position switch provides the standard Neck, Neck + Middle, Middle, Middle + Bridge and Bridge PUP configurations. Each of the phase switches allows you to flip the phase of the Neck/Middle and Bridge/Middle.

Anyone familiar with phase switching on guitars with humbucker PUPs knows how thin sounding the guitar sounds when the PUP's are out of phase. Well the sonic quality of a pair of single-coil PUPs switched out-of-phase is even thinner! IMHO that sonic option is useless in most playing situations. To "improve" on that combination I modified my S-70 by adding an additional volume POT to the middle pickup and wired it up as an attenuator that can adjust the middle PUP from 50% to 100% volume. This control now allowed you to "tune" the amount of phase cancellation by the middle PUP.

Also when I was inside doing the wiring I noticed that Guild used a 5 position switch with terminals on both sides of the rotary switch. I decided to take advantage of the unused side and add an alternate set of wiring that would allow you to select the Neck + Bridge and Neck + Middle + Bridge. I combined the alternate PUP selection switch with the Middle PUP volume control and installed a POT that also can be pulled out to switch the PUP selection configuration. (I didn't make a sketch of my wiring configuration at that time. One of these days I'll get back inside and document the configuration.) With this modification and use of the phase switch I get an additional set of tones including the "bell-like" single coil tones.

To top it all off I added a Guild bigsby assembly like the type used on the 1970's S-100 Deluxe. It always struck me as odd that Guild did not install a vibrato on this model guitar as a stock item. My speculative guess for Guild not having this option was that guitars heros of the day were not using vibrato's (ie., Hendrix was dead and EVH wasn't on the seen yet).

My S-70 has evolved a bit since I first picked it up. In the last months I was able to find an origional S-70 pickguard so I am planning to replace my repair job one and do a little custom work to hide the screw holes that were left over with the addition of the Bigsby from removing the Stop. It should make a reasonable project over the Holidays.

matsickma

A few pictures...

[IMG:480:640]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a343/matsickma/Guild%20S-70/S-70_1.jpg[/img]

[IMG:480:640]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a343/matsickma/Guild%20S-70/S-70_2.jpg[/img]

Thats a very nice example!!! Your is the S-70D, isn't?... The body is made of alder. I like your sunburst better.

I am willing to open it and see the electronics... I am thinking in installing a rotary switch to include series combinations of the pickups: Bridge+Middle, Bridge+neck and Neck+Middle in series.

That could be a bunch of cool humcancelling tones... 8) 8)

matsickma said:

Well the sonic quality of a pair of single-coil PUPs switched out-of-phase is even thinner! IMHO that sonic option is useless in most playing situations.

Click to expand...

It depends on whether you want a T-Bone Walker sound or not, I guess. Could be handy for the blues folks.

As I was reading matsickma's post detailing the phase switches with the 5 way I was thinking to myself....why not just wire up the 5 way super switch? Then I came to my senses & realized this thread is about 3 pickup guitars!

Anyway, for you guys that like to tinker, the 5 way super switch is a pretty fun little project that gives you phase combinations with 2 pickups. A wiring diagram was posted on the telemodders forum once upon a time, but I have a copy here somewhere if anyone is interested.

Hi Kap'n,

I find the sound a bit thin for my taste but can see where it has its place. I actually like the attributes of the nasal tone qualities of the PUPs out-of-phase but find the single coils cancel out to much lowend response. I installed the extra volume POT to control just the right amount of cancellation.

I perfer to have individual controls over each of my pickups. (Lack of individual PUP controls on my Nightbird was the main reason I sold it a few years back.) I have discovered that some great tonal qualities can be obtained with humbuckers out-of-phase when you cut the tone down on one PUP (usually neck) and then tweak the volume on one of the PUPs.

M

matsickma,

Do you have the original case? Mine guitar doesn't have it and I think is going to be a bit difficult to find other case that suits this one. Do you know any other model from the Guild catalog that has the same case?

Thanks!

matsickma said:

I perfer to have individual controls over each of my pickups. (Lack of individual PUP controls on my Nightbird was the main reason I sold it a few years back.) I have discovered that some great tonal qualities can be obtained with humbuckers out-of-phase when you cut the tone down on one PUP (usually neck) and then tweak the volume on one of the PUPs.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I find phase switches on double humbucker guitars useless without separate volume knobs at least.

Me, I'm not looking to sound like T-Bone, but I know others are.

I have 70's era S70. The guy I bought it from put locking tuners on it, replaced the neck pickup and took out the switches. I've since replaced all three pickups with Reverend closeouts (I did not put the switches back in).

The the ownership history is known for this guitar and it turns out that the guy I bought it from bought it from someone I knew. Last week he was cleaning out some drawers and found (and sent to me) a one page original cut sheet explaining how the switches affect the knobs.

If someone has the original wiring, with the switches, I'd be interested in seeing it.

This is my first post to the forum so I'm not sure if I'll get the picture correct:



Jeff