hansmoust
Enlightened Member
matsickma said:I considered buying a 1968 Bluesbird before I picked up my '72 (own it about 4 years now). I found the mini humbuckers made the guitar a little thin sounding-it's all up to an individuals taste. However one thing I noticed about the '68 is that the neck and how it attaches to the body is more like an Aristocrat. In fact if I remember correctly a late model M75 will not fit in the case of the earlier model.
I like the change Guild made to the neck and placement relative to the body on the 1972 model. IMHO the later year design of the hollowbody M75 Bluesbird was the best of them all.
matsickma
Hello again everybody (sorry about the move),
The neck change already took place during 1968. It was basically the same change that was implemented on the double-cutaway Starfire-series at the end of 1966. After the move from Hoboken to Westerly there was a lot of experimentation going on at the Guild factory. One of the things they were trying was to update the Bluesbird M-75, so it would be a little better feedback resistant. These experiments would eventually lead to the discontinuation of the Hollow Body M-75 and the introduction of the Solid Body version.
Here's a shot that shows a block under the bridge of an early '70s M-75CS:
[img:756:567]http://www.guitarchives.nl/fotos/M75CSdetail_1.jpg[/img]
And here's another shot of a similar guitar that shows that even a three-pickup M-75CS was tried out but, as we all know now, it didn't make it to the production line:
[img:756:567]http://www.guitarchives.nl/fotos/M75CSdetail_2.jpg[/img]
Both really cool guitars, but the timing was not right!
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl