Guild mystery bass.

[C.W.Wolf]

Greetings. Thanks for this forum. I am amazed with what I already found, but I still have some questions.

I have had this Guild bass since I was 19, (Current age is 64) and I have never been able to identify it. I know the face had been painted before I got it, and it has served me well over the years. I played in multiple bands for 10+ years and am now retired from playing out. I now build custom NA style flutes and dabble in a little recording.

About the Bass. I always thought it was an M 85 until I started actually looking. The serial number is BB 230 which I have found is one of the "lost record's era" numbers. I have been told by some that it may be what was called a "shop model" or transition build. It does have some unique features from everything else I can find. It is a semi-hollow, quite heavy, has all 5 control knobs on the same side and no access plates other than for the truss rod. It is really heavy, which leads me to believe it is a semi-hallow. Here is a photo and a link to more photos of the bass. To see the rest, use this link.

Hope I posted this correctly as I am new to the forum. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[GGJaguar]

Welcome to LTG! That's an interesting bass and we have several bass experts that should see your post and offer some thoughts.

 

[chazmo]

Welcome aboard!

Have a look through:

M-85

Passing the 70-year-old mark triggering a change of priorities. Slimming down possessions. So I'm going to part ways with my 1970ish M-85 with original Bisonics. You NEED this bass.

letstalkguild.com

What about it makes you think it's not an M-85, @C.W.Wolf ?

Oh, and flip that TRC around!

 

[C.W.Wolf]

Thanks. There is one in that post that has almost the same control configuration as mine. Almost

 

[hansmoust]

Hello C.W.Wolf,

Welcome! It's an M-85-II from 1969.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[C.W.Wolf]

Thank you.

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

Hey C.W., I saw your post on Facebook and see you made it over here to LTG. Besides finding out the info on your Bass, you find a lot of other fun stuff around here!

 

[C.W.Wolf]

Hey C.W., I saw your post on Facebook and see you made it over here to LTG. Besides finding out the info on your Bass, you find a lot of other fun stuff around here!

You certainly do see a lot here. I have barely scratched the surface. Thanks for the suggestion. I am actually going to look up a few more things today.

 

[bassman10096]

Very interesting bass. The white top brings a cool but non traditional vibe. But so do the other anomalies. I like it. I have to ask: w no rear access, how’d they get the pots and wiring inside?

 

[Default]

I handled one of these a while back. Once you take the pickups out, you have plenty of room. It's not a solid block, like the Gibsons.

 

[mellowgerman]

Hello and welcome!

That's a great bass you have there. I was looking for one of these semi-hollow M85 basses for years, until my 1970 specimen became available here on the forum. Mine has an original black finish, but I think your white refin looks really cool too. There were a number of variations of this semi-hollow model between 1967-1971, before they became the far-more-common, shallower solidbody version. Easiest way to tell from photos is if there is binding on the back edge, it's a semi-hollow. The pickups are the legendary Hagstrom Bisonic single-coils, of which a lot of us here on the forum are major fans. Knob/switch configurations varied and mine originally had 4 knobs (vol x 2, tone x 2) and a pickup selector switch. Since I like to play in different plucking-hand positions for different tones, the selector switch so close to the butt of the neck became problematic for me, because I'd sometimes bump it and switch the setting, so I swapped it out for a 3 position rotary switch knob. Here it is, along with my 1970 Starfire:

Worth mentioning, if you look closely at the pickups on mine, the neck pickup has been flipped 180 degrees. Typically this is easily done without having to modify the pickup cavity (all depends on whether or not the person at the factory drilled the screw holes for the pickup equally spaced around the edge of the cavity) and will give you some different sounds, most notable when blending both pickups together, but also a touch more clarity when the neck pickup is solo'd. Since these are single-coils, the coil of the pickup sits underneath the big solid pole pieces. When you rotate the pickup like I did, it brings the responsive portion of the pickups closer together. It's not better or worse, but that configuration is my preference.

Over the years, in searching for one of these, I would sometimes save photos of ones that I'd seen up for sale, to keep track of variations and such. A lot of those photos have been lost between computers and external harddrives, but below is another one with the same control configuration as yours. I believe I saved this photo from the Guitar Center Hollywood Vintage site, at least a decade ago.

 

[C.W.Wolf]

I handled one of these a while back. Once you take the pickups out, you have plenty of room. It's not a solid block, like the Gibsons.

It seems like it is a solid body with a hollow body on the face. Not sure what it actually looks like inside because I have never had a need to access the innards. It is plenty hefty though.

Hello and welcome!

That's a great bass you have there. I was looking for one of these semi-hollow M85 basses for years, until my 1970 specimen became available here on the forum. Mine has an original black finish, but I think your white refin looks really cool too. There were a number of variations of this semi-hollow model between 1967-1971, before they became the far-more-common, shallower solidbody version. Easiest way to tell from photos is if there is binding on the back edge, it's a semi-hollow. The pickups are the legendary Hagstrom Bisonic single-coils, of which a lot of us here on the forum are major fans. Knob/switch configurations varied and mine originally had 4 knobs (vol x 2, tone x 2) and a pickup selector switch. Since I like to play in different plucking-hand positions for different tones, the selector switch so close to the butt of the neck became problematic for me, because I'd sometimes bump it and switch the setting, so I swapped it out for a 3 position rotary switch knob. Here it is, along with my 1970 Starfire:

Over the years, in searching for one of these, I would sometimes save photos of ones that I'd seen up for sale, to keep track of variations and such. A lot of those photos have been lost between computers and external harddrives, but below is another one with the same control configuration as yours. I believe I saved this photo from the Guitar Center Hollywood Vintage site, at least a decade ago.

I remember hitting the switch once or twice until I got used to it. I seldom used a pick with mine. There were times and certain songs that I would use one pickup or the other, but most of the time it was on both. I had a Kustom amp with an 18 that I picked up for a song I used after one of my band members sold the V4B and cabinets. They decided a newer PA was more important. Miss that V4B.
I May have to have a look inside to clean the jack since I get an occasional buzz at the connector. I'll try a soft clean first.

 

[chazmo]

I handled one of these a while back. Once you take the pickups out, you have plenty of room. It's not a solid block, like the Gibsons.

By the way, am I correct that this body is maple? If so, then it's a good thing it's not completely solid. I'll bet it's a tank already!

 

[mellowgerman]

The center block (of mine at least) is solid maple from the top to the back of the bass, which accounts for the weight. The top, I believe is actually spruce laminate. The sides and back are also laminate, so it's constructed like a traditional semi-hollow, be it a very deep one. That said, the pickup cavities themselves are also very deep and have large openings on the sides to allow for all of the controls to be fed through. I had a photo from when I opened it up, but can't seem to find it easily at the moment. Will post if I happen upon it!

 

[C.W.Wolf]

If I open this one up, I will also take photos. My "filesystem" is much the same as yours, in fact I have a lot of my older files backed up on cd's and external hard drives. I was asked at the local guitar shop if I had ever taken the pickups out to see if there might be more information about the guitar in there. I told them I never had a problem with it, so I never thought about it. Probably nothing in there for markings anyway.

 

[mavuser]

The tops on some of them are spruce, and some of them maple. @mellowgerman has an earlier one as evidenced by no "suck switch," and thus would have a better chance of being spruce; the later ones have the switch, and are more likely maple; but there is no hard date where it changed, and there is overlap with the suck switch being in both spruce and maple at some point, i'm sure; as there is also spruce/maple overlap with dating, or at least serial numbers...in short they made both spruce and maple, but there was overlap where they had both at the same time.

There is also a chance that @mellowgerman has a true semi-hollow and @C.W.Wolf has a "chambered" version, which would definitley be heavier. I will let @The Guilds of Grot chime in on that one, and he can show us his M-85's as well!

 

[mellowgerman]

@mavuser I'm not sure I'd say mine is an earlier one since it is from 1970 and I'm pretty sure we've seen the tone-suck switch as far back as '67. I think this was just an oddball transition-era bass. It also has the larger, more accentuated headstock - introduced in 1970 and also exhibited on my Starfire. So in terms of the non-solid M85 basses, this would be one of the later ones, though in the grand scheme of M85's (solids included) it is indeed an early-ish one.

Here's one photo peek inside the cavity that I was able to track down. The top edge of the cavity, where the wires disappear into the hole, goes to the potentiometers. The hole the wires enter to the left there is the channel that connects to the neck pickup cavity. The cavities are not all the way to the back laminate of the bass though, so there is still mass going deeper there. Though there is a whole lot of that center block routed out, it's still massive. I'd consider it a medium-weight bass at 8.8 lbs (which is heavier than my Starfire), but not really heavy in terms of other basses... pales in comparison to the 10.6 lbs Hagstrom Swede bass and the 11+ lbs Gibson Triumph bass I've owned, as well as most reports we've heard of the solid-body M85 basses.

 

[mavuser]

@mellowgerman thanks for the details, yours is so late that the suck switch was already removed. The deep-hard switch was introduced with the chrome Guild humbuckers later. so your bass would appear to be between the suck switch and the deep-hard switch. love that bigger headstock!

 

[mellowgerman]

Yes! The headstock is a large part (pun retroactively intended) of why I love these 1970 basses so much - early enough to still have Bisonics, but late enough to have that gorgeous inflated'n'ornated headstock design. I also like these early poly finishes. Nice and thin, but still offer plenty of protection for the wood underneath.

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

Yes, my two thick bodied M-85 weight quite different.

This one is more hollow:


And this one is more solid:



And this one is thin and like Cheryl Crow knows, just right!