NBD - Need Expert Input

I outed this bass earlier in the week, based on a handwritten card at a local grocery story, advertising a 1975 Guild M85 bass. I met the guy this morning and we made a deal. Now to figure out exactly what this is. By the serial number on the headstock - 12259 - it dates to 1960. Can that be right Hans? Other than that, it plays and sounds good to me. The guy said he had it checked out at a reputable local shop, and he said it was in good order. Dirty - yes. He did throw in a working amp - a Dean Markley K100B. The bass sounded pretty good through it. Finish is OK - aside from the initials JM scratched in. This has been played.

I'm no expert, but the crew here is, so have at it. Who knows, maybe I'll keep it and learn how to play bass? Lots more pics here:

Guild Bass Photos

Marty

Congrats Marty, I think you got a great deal! That serial number has to be missing a digit, and my best guess is that it's from 1975. Given the light weight (mine was over 11 pounds), I wonder if this one has a chambered body of some sort. Those pickups, and the M85II in solid body form, weren't around until then. Checking the bible, the M85II in hollow body form was discontinued in 1972, but doesn't mention when production restarted with the "mudbucker" pickups like this one has. Maybe @hansmoust will chime in and clarify.

Looks like with a little TLC it could be a good player. Finding a case for it is going to be tough, though.

Hello Marty,

That's a Guild M-85II from the year 1975. As Sandy already pointed out, there's one digit not visible at the end. Go ahead and look at the inside of the back cover; there may be a label that should give you the complete model info and serial number.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl

hansmoust said:

Hello Marty,

That's a Guild M-85II from the year 1975. As Sandy already pointed out, there's one digit not visible at the end. Go ahead and look at the inside of the back cover; there may be a label that should give you the complete model info and serial number.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl

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Thanks Hans. Just found the info on page 160 of your book, and noticed that some of these have an ebony fretboard. Obviously, this one doesn't, and is about three pounds lighter than the c.1975 one that I had, which also didn't have an ebony board.

Much appreciated, and yes, inside the back cover revealed the full number: 122591. Let the cleanup begin!

Marty

Found this interesting. I need a tutorial on the knobs and switches, but this sounded intriguing:


Which switch is the deep-hard one? Asking for a friend...

Marty

MartyG said:

Found this interesting. I need a tutorial on the knobs and switches, but this sounded intriguing:


Which switch is the deep-hard one? Asking for a friend...

Marty

Click to expand...

Something I was happy to eviscerate from Greenie. Became known as the "suck switch" for what it did to the bass's tone. If @fronobulax is around, he can expound some.

Looks like I'm missing what would have been the master volume knob - a smaller one without the guild shield on top. There is a generic replacement tone knob on the right, and I'm not sure the others are in the right place. The far left knob should be the master volume.



Also looking at the (rosewood?) bridge pieces, the one on the left has an additional groove for some reason. Any idea why? The string seems to be in the right position as it is.

Regarding the extra notch on the G string saddle, I can see in the dead-on front view of the bass that the G string is actually spaced too far in, so who knows why it was done, but I personally like even spacing across my strings and would move it back to the original saddle notch. They may have just wanted the distance from string to edge of saddle to more closely match what's going on with the E string, completely disregarding the rest of the instrument (i.e. pickups and fretboard and so on)

Or maybe a previous owner was drinking the straight-string-pull kool aid? Some people think that having any kind of angle from tailpiece to saddle (or, on the opposite end, tuning machine to nut) somehow interferes with the way the string vibrates or tuning stability... but if you think about it, even if you get the entire string from tailpiece to tuning machine running in a "straight line" from a front-view of the instrument, there's still an upward pull and break-angle going over both the nut and the saddle and that is actually necessary! So it's actually very 2 dimensional thinking (literally!)

I moved it back to the original notch. Looks like a mini-notch had begun to form in the straight-line position, but I agree it's better to have the strings evenly spaced. Thanks for the detail as to why some may do it differently.

Also moved the four correct knobs to their correct positions, and am only missing a master volume knob. Anyone have a spare, or know where to source one?

MartyG said:

Found this interesting. I need a tutorial on the knobs and switches, but this sounded intriguing:

Which switch is the deep-hard one? Asking for a friend...

Marty

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MartyG said:

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Going across the top from left to right I would expect

Master Volume, Bridge Volume, Bridge Tone

and below,

Deep/Hard Switch, Neck Volume, Neck Tone.

I'm extrapolating from memory, a 72 JS II and @The Guilds of Grot' s 1973 M85-II pictured here.

The knob in the Bridge Tone "slot" is not a Guild knob but the Master Volume could be the original Bridge Volume and the Bridge Volume the original Bridge Tone. As far as I know Guild used the same knobs for both neck and bridge positions.

The Deep/Hard switch only effects the neck pickup, if my extrapolation is correct. There are nitpickers who would say "suck switch" only applies to a push switch on 1970 and earlier basses with Bisonics and not the Deep/Hard switch. On the JS II the Deep position is very bassy and almost boomy - almost a treble cut. Somewhere on LTG there are reports of bypassing the switch if you are inclined to modify as well as restore.

I have a MV knob, pmd you

I'm disturbed by the names of the switch.

Rocky said:

I'm disturbed by the names of the switch.

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Well "Deep-Hard Tone Switch" is what Guild called it so only you can decide whether innuendo was intended circa 1970. "suck" switch, AFAIK was coined by people who did not like the tone with the switch and claimed it sucked all of the tone out of the sound. The people who have reported before and after experiences from removing the switch don't seem to be able to explain why Guild thought it was a good idea. Yet another Guild mystery that will probably never be solved.

The suck switch has a transformer/coil/choke (whatever you want to call it), on a single coil pickup, which is the specific source of the tone-suckage. In my experience it is mainly a (big) signal/volume drop.

The deep hard switch, simply put, does not have this (or any) transformer/coil/choke...and does not have anywhwere near the same effect on the humbucker pickup of the 70's. That bass humbucker is super hot and will shake the foundation of your house, at least on a 1972 JS-1 it will...flipping the switch from "deep" to "hard" can be very usefull in many scenarios, and gives more of an upright, or even short scale fender bass type of tone, that is nowhere near as hot as the "deep" full spectrum humbucker setting.

so the deep-hard switch changes the tone entirely on a 70's hunbucker equipped Guild bass.

whereas the suck switch simply ruins the tone on a 60's single coil equipped Guild bass.

a conversation with someone that thinks the suck switch and deep hard switch are the same thing, generally ends the same way a similar conversation would end, about tonewoods and fretboard woods, and that is to say..."deaf people are also entitled to an opinion"

here is a photo of the suck switch components in the circuit, that cause the unwanted results. two extra green chicklet caps, a random resistor, and a transformer.



here is a deep-hard circuit (the black square is the mini-switch):



both basses are single-pickup, in the neck position, specimens.

mavuser said:

The suck switch has a transformer/coil/choke (whatever you want to call it), on a single coil pickup, which is the specific source of the tone-suckage. In my experience it is mainly a (big) signal/volume drop.

The deep hard switch, simply put, does not have this (or any) transformer/coil/choke...and does not have anywhwere near the same effect on the humbucker pickup of the 70's. That bass humbucker is super hot and will shake the foundation of your house, at least on a 1972 JS-1 it will...flipping the switch from "deep" to "hard" can be very usefull in many scenarios, and gives more of an upright, or even short scale fender bass type of tone, that is nowhere near as hot as the "deep" full spectrum humbucker setting.

so the deep-hard switch changes the tone entirely on a 70's hunbucker equipped Guild bass.

whereas the suck switch simply ruins the tone on a 60's single coil equipped Guild bass.

a conversation with someone that thinks the suck switch and deep hard switch are the same thing, generally ends the same way a similar conversation would end, about tonewoods and fretboard woods, and that is to say..."deaf people are also entitled to an opinion"

Click to expand...

I dug up this thread, from when I sent Greenie to @Fixit for some electronics upgrades. Damn, can it be 12 years ago? Lots of good info here, and yes, I'm still pleased by the results.

Would be cool to have someone show screenshots of that frequency spectrum thingy people have on their computer sound processors to see the frequency spectrum of the deep vs. hard settings.

lungimsam said:

Would be cool to have someone show screenshots of that frequency spectrum thingy people have on their computer sound processors to see the frequency spectrum of the deep vs. hard settings.

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You could go down the rabbit hole yourself. Find a digital signal processing suite that includes a fast Fourier Transform and you're mostly there. But I think the best way to go is to convince @GAD that he is interested in this and then offer to loan him instruments once he has his lab set up. Personally I'd be interested in:

Neck humbucker with each position of the Deep Hard switch.

Vintage Bisonic with each position of the "suck" switch.

And for extra credit any reasonable comparison of a vintage Bisonic, Newark Street Bisonic, Dark Star and Novak BS-DS.

But to the original query it doesn't take to sophisticated an ear to discern the difference in the positions on a JS II. When playing a harmonically appropriate bass note was an even greater challenge for me than it is now, I lived with the deep setting, tone at zero, bass up and treble down on the amp and played. No one could actually discern what pitch I was playing so I got away with a lot of mistakes

There is a thread about disabling the switch. I approximated that with a few wires and alligator clips. I liked the results but not enough to make the mod permanent. I seem to recall the neck PU was hotter and the position related differences between the bridge and neck were more obvious.

The Deep-Hard switch in the photo shared by @mavuser is super simple; just a passive high-pass switch, which sends the full signal direct to the volume pot in one position and in the other, sends the signal through a capacitor, effectively lobbing off that big boomy low end. This makes a lot more sense than the earlier "tone suck" switch, especially given the massive signal coming from those chrome humbuckers... even with the low end chopped off, it may well still give a bigger signal than your typical Fender bass pickup puts out. Also, when you cut those lows, it can really emphasize the mid frequencies and give you more defined punch (which I'm assuming is the "Hard"). This is actually a mod that I particularly like for blending pickups - my customized Rickenbacker bass has a vintage toaster in the neck position and a Hofner staple pickup in the middle position. Separately both have a nice big tone, but when blended they get a little muddy. I wired up a passive high-pass knob for the Hofner pickup, which allows for a very nice and clean blended tone between the two pickups.

Regarding the 60s / early-70s "tone suck" switch, I have a theory that it may have been designed with the amps of the times in mind? Bass speaker technology and cab design especially was not what it is today, not being able to produce and handle the big low end at higher volumes, so I could see the thinner sounds resulting from the "tone suck" switch allowing for more volume when using something like a vintage Fender Bassman stack. Otherwise, all that big low end produced by a neck-position Bisonic could eat up a lot of the power on tap without having a speaker cab that can properly create and push that signal, leaving us with lower headroom (earlier distortion) and less volume... just a though!