GGJaguar
Reverential Member
From an estate sale, I present one very clean 1976 X-500 BL (from the roughly 15 year period when it was just X-500 not X-500 Stuart). About the only thing I had to do was change the strings. It has the usual 1970s construction - laminated maple body with a 4-ply spruce-unknown-unknown-maple laminated top (0.20 inch top thickness), 7-ply "racing stripe" binding, 3-ply bound f-holes, HB-1 pickups, Guild labeled Schaller M6 tuners, engraved harp tail (made in West Germany) and lucite stairstep pickguard with Guild logo. The body has some really nice figuring ("ghost" flame) that is readily apparent to the naked eye, but it is very difficult to photograph using point-and-shoot digital. Still, you can get a sense of what it's like from the photo below.
I'm not a jazzer, but the chimey HB-1s lend themselves to rock and power pop really well. The guitar doesn't have a soundpost, but it is more feedback resistant than the '77 CE-100D I had (also with HB-1s). That guitar howled at the slightest provocation! This X-500 has the typical '70s skinny neck with a 1 5/8-inch nut width. I prefer a wider nut width (1 11/16 or 1 3/4), but the neck on this guitar not all that much different than many of the solid body guitars I play so the dimensions aren't much of an issue. Overall I'm really pleased with this guitar.
I'm not a jazzer, but the chimey HB-1s lend themselves to rock and power pop really well. The guitar doesn't have a soundpost, but it is more feedback resistant than the '77 CE-100D I had (also with HB-1s). That guitar howled at the slightest provocation! This X-500 has the typical '70s skinny neck with a 1 5/8-inch nut width. I prefer a wider nut width (1 11/16 or 1 3/4), but the neck on this guitar not all that much different than many of the solid body guitars I play so the dimensions aren't much of an issue. Overall I'm really pleased with this guitar.