New Starfire radius supposed to be 9-1/2?

[Wally Wilmo III]

Hi, New Here, I have three acoustics, just bought a new Guild Starfire V from Sweetwater in Black.

The guitar like most these days needed a setup. What's weird is that after finding several high frets I decided to do a whole fret level.
I sharpie the fret tops and break out a 9-1/2 inch radius block, it only removes the marker at the end of the frets. I break out a 10-inch radius block, its pretty much the same. So, I grab a 12-inch radius block and see the marker start to disappear but not quite all the tops. My guess is that this guitar is around a 14-inch radius. It's supposed to be 9-1/2. What's up with that? Has anyone ever seen that in a electric guild. After leveling the frets and adding fall off after the 15th fret or so this guitar plays great. under 3/64 on high E, 4 or so on the low E. No buzz, no fret outs on bends. Ther several other odd things, like the nut cut so high that you couldn't play cowboy chords without being out of tune, oh yeah, the nut fell off when I took the strings off and there were big dents in the first fret only, like someone knocked a fret down with the strings still on. Now it's a great playing and sounding guitar, it's a 12-inch radius now, even the Guildsby stays fairly in tune. But damn the radius has got me stumped. I own a lot of guitars, and work on my own stuff all the time never seen this.

Cool Beans
Gene

 

[Walter Broes]

Not a lot of experience with NS Starfires, but I have two NS X175's, and they're both 9 1/2".
14" seems unusually flat.

And yes - the shop I work at part-time is a Guild dealer, and it does feel like setups on recent NS guitars are pretty bad. Necks with waaay to much relief, nuts that are high beyond the "we'll leave a hair extra to allow for string gauge/relief preference" point high, etc. It's a little dissappointing as the guitars are not getting cheaper.

 

[Wally Wilmo III]

Yeah, the radius is weird, almost like an acoustic board. But in the end after a few hours of work this thing is a real keeper. This is the second one I got, the first had a way better setup, but the tone pot on the neck pickup was bad. Sweetwater actually overnighted the current guitar. I didn't check the radius on the old guitar. If a guitar has good bones, you can always make it play well. This guitar had terrible quality control but very good bones. Even the pickups are fine after adjustment. I pretty sure you could do a fine rockabilly on this guitar. I have a Gibson 335 to compare it to and this guitar as it sits now plays as well and has a unique voice and a bigsby to boot, it does stay in tune with lube and light use (warble). I'm very happy with this instrument, but a novice or someone who can't tweek guitars would have sent it back.

BTW what do you think.of the import jumbo acoustics? I've got the 6 and 12 versions of the sunburst versions, 2512 maybe. One had a bad truss rod, guild replaced without a lot of hassle. I compared the 6 string to my buddies Taylor and the guild definitely held its own, good guitar, it sounds better than my early 70s D 44, even the pickup is good enough for stage use. It makes you wonder about cost vs name brand.