WELCOME TO THE SPOOXLY GUITAR SHOW, SPOOXLODYTES! MY REVIEW OF THE NEW GUILD SURFLINER:
Now I admit I don't know much about the Guild brand, but I found out on the internet that it was started by former Epiphone
employees that guilded together when Gibson bought Epiphone. Guild is the import brand for Fender, and that's why this guitar
looks like a Jaguar or somethin', (heh heh!). On to the important stuff!
There was no case, but it came with some stickers, picks, and a booklet--but NO COA!
The wood looks like maple--it was said to be a popular wood, and I think mahogany and maple are the two most popular woods for guitars, and under the orange finish the grainage doesn't appear to be mahogany. The neck is maple without much flamage.
It's a bolt on, and the neck plate is kinda cool--it looks like an arrow, or maybe a Xmas tree! QC is a little off on this one--it's string through but they drilled the holes at an angle or somethin'. It's got 3 rocker switches that can turn any of the 3 pickups on or off in
any combination. It would have been cool if they had went and put a Buckethead kill switch on this guitar too (heh heh)!
I think the bridge pickup is a Gibson mini humbucker with a weird cover, and for the neck and middle pickups I think Fender
had went and split a Filtertron in half! I have to buy a guitar cord to be able to hear what it sounds like through an amp, but unplugged
it sounds O.K.
Sorry! I've been watching too much Trogley! Anyway, my orange one arrived Tuesday and I've been playing it quite a bit. I like bright guitars, and this certainly checks that box. I don't mind the switches, but I do prefer the ones on my Hagstrom 12 string, so yeah, maybe one day I'll change them.
The LB-1 is nice, but pales to the ones on my '67 Starfire XII. I like the DeArmonds. The neck is nice, liked the frets, and purposely only played the Surfliner until tonight, when I switched to my recently acquired S-300. Oops--oh yeah, THAT'S what a neck should be like--!
I may eventually put a tremolo or maybe even a palm pedal on the Surfliner--if not a Tremar perhaps a Duesenberg. The main reason I bought this
is I wanted something that had microtonal frets and this seemed like the perfect candidate. Back in 2014 on my X-150D I wrote a Middle Eastern surf instrumental, and since then I have toyed with the idea of expanding on that theme. It always seems weird to me to buy new guitars--but then I drive only Studebakers so what do I know? For the money it seems pretty nice, but until the re-fret job I'd much rather play my poor ice pick ravaged S-50!