Hi Guys
I've had my Thunderbird for 2 weeks now, and I'm loving it!
I traded a 2004 American Deluxe Strat and I'm not sorry at all.
It's easily as well made and finished, it has a much nicer neck and fretboard and the tones are just lovely.
My S-200 is also about two weeks old - did you and me order ours from the same batch via Sweetwater? And yeah, I'm precisely with you regarding everything else you stated there (former MIA Strat devotee myself). This T-Bird reissue is all that. Guild really nailed it.
I'm curious about the setup of the (bridge) pick up though.
It seems to angle quite a bit down towards the bridge (i.e. Away from the strings), and it's noticeably quieter than the neck pick up.
I kind of expected that, but maybe not so much..??
I'd like to know any other owners opinions, thanks.
My S-200 arrived set up the same way as you described, but I'm hearing slightly different results than what you described. First off, I would advise caution and patience before making any drastic changes such as subbing out pickups or the like. It's a reissue of a classic vintage instrument, and Guild's luthiers went to some lengths to create a faithful one.
A neck pickup will tend to pick up more volume than a bridge pickup due to the physics involved: the neck pickup is closer to the apex of where the strings vibrate, whereas the bridge pickup is way off to one end of that apex. With the S-200's circuit design, the "mode" switch can compensate for that, because you can set dedicated volume and tone settings for each pickup, which is the real genius of this guitar.
The one peculiar idiosyncrasy I discovered on my S-200, is that the neck pickup in mode 1 is a bit louder than the neck-only setting in mode 2, but I'd chalked that up to the extra circuitry in mode 2 inherently imposing a slight attenuation. Again, that extra set of volume/tone pots sets things straight.
As you're probably aware, as you raise a pickup closer to the strings, the addition of volume comes with a correlating subtraction in sustain, so don't go too crazy raising that bridge pickup, because set as-is, the S-200 has some real nice sustain qualities.
Bear in mind, I've been a lifelong studio recording rat, and the S-200's LB-1 pickups, combined with its body and neck architecture, in that regard have a lot of nuance to my ears. Where I'm going with this: Bias. When recording vocals, I've learned to set the LDC microphone at an angle to the vocalist, rather than a flat perpendicular, because the diaphragm at a bias will pick up more nuances of the voice's character. I believe the S-200's bridge pickup is likewise set at a bias to the strings, to pick up more nuance.
I'm not an expert, so I could be wrong, but I just love the sound and feel of this guitar as-is. YMMV.