What is a 1966 Guild Starfire III supposed to sound like?

[Steve Hoffman]

Yes, it's a silly question but I just got a minty "under the bed" '66 Starfire III and the only other Starfires I've heard are modern.

This one sounds (how should I put it) very Gibson L-5 sounding on the bridge pickup (a good thing) and very thin on the neck pickup. But not thin like a Gretsch thin but sort of a clanging type thin. With both pickups going it sounds, well, it's not a sound I love.

So, is this about right? Can anyone tell me the scoop?

Thanks!

 

[GAD]

Thin on the neck? That doesn't sound right for any dual-hum guitar...

FWIW, my 1997 SF III sounds positively delicious on the neck pickup. Warm, deep, woody and so hollow-body bluesy that I barely use anything else.

Maybe the pickup needs a magnet swap or re-gause or whatever applies.

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Sorry, I listed the the pickups backward. I should never type in the back seat of a car..

At any rate, does anyone have a vintage Starfire? Lemme know.

I've heard a zillion of them from the 90's, etc. Never actually heard a "back in the day" Starfire until now....

 

[Walter Broes]

I don't know why I bother.....

 

[matsickma]

I like the Guild mini humbucker sound. I have many different 60's Guilds with these pickups. I tend to like the tone out of the Starfive V the most but give considerable playing time to other hollow body models.

The mini humbuckers are brighter than the HB-1's but they also are have a raw bite and distortion to them. I am pretty sure the guitar tone of the Kinks "You really got me" is a Starfire III with mini humbuckers in the "bridge" position. I have heard the speakers were sliced to add more distortion but don't know if that is true.

For the longest time I stayed away from these pickups. Then I saw a Feist video and liked the raw sound of her late 1960's SFV. I still perfer single coils PUPs but also like the mini humbuckers. I am not a performer so my choice of instrument and tone varies quite a bit. The only pedal I ever use is a WAW WAW and old late 60's Guild tube amps.

M

 

[GAD]

Ahh - so you mean the bridge pickup is weak? That makes a bit more sense. I'd check to see if it's too low first.

This post has great advice:

There's possibly nothing wrong with your guitar whatsoever. On any guitar, there's a lot more string energy in the area where the neck pickup sits than near the bridge. On hollowbodies, this effect is even more pronounced.

The trick to adjusting pickups on a dual pickup hollowbody is to start out with the bridge pickup, adjust that until you get it at it's loudest and fattest, then adjust the neck pickup to balance with that.
Start out with the neck pickup, and you'll run out of adjustment room for the bridge one fast, and you'll most likely never get it to balance right. On a 60's SFIII, you might very well end up with the bridge pickup sitting as high up as it will go, and opposite on the neck pickup.

This is what modern pickup makers are talking about when they talk about "calibrated sets" - underwinding the neck pickup, and/or overwinding the bridge pickup makes it easier to get balance out of a set - but usually, adjusting the pickup height will do the trick as well.

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Thanks, all! I wanted to post some pictures of this beauty but I guess this Forum doesn't allow it. Right?

 

[GAD]

Thanks, all! I wanted to post some pictures of this beauty but I guess this Forum doesn't allow it. Right?

Sure it does! but you need to host them elsewhere. If you want you can email them to me and I'll host 'em for you.

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Great, email sent!

 

[GAD]

Here are Steve's pics (Nice looker!)

 

[yettoblaster]

Wow, a '66 in that condition is an eviable find.

 

[AlohaJoe]

Uh... wow! :shock:

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Well, we are so used to seeing the old Starfires totally trashed and the nice Cherry color faded away or just plain rubbed off that when I saw this mint one I had to try and get it. Not cheap at 2k but what the heck.

Cheaper than that mint Guild '58 A-350 Stratford I just grabbed. :shock: Don't tell my wife or I'll be sleeping on guitar cases for a year..

 

[parker_knoll]

that's a beauty.

I have a 1966 Starfire III and I would say the dual pickup (centre position) sound you probably don't like because it's usually set out of phase. you can set them in phase if you want a less nasal centre position sound.

The neck pickup on mine sounds very different from the bridge - the bridge is raucous and rock'n'rolly, the neck is woody, organic and jazzy. I use them both for really different sounds. The only thing is the playability on mine is tough. How's the action on that one?

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Thanks much for the info. I'm so used to the center position on hollowbody guitars to be a nice blend of both pickups that this threw me. To change phase involves rewiring so I'll leave it just like it is if this is how Guild originally wired it.

You've described the sound of both pickups very accurately, I appreciate it.

The action is pretty good on mine. It doesn't play like a Johnny Smith Artist but I didn't expect it to. If Dave Davies didn't have a problem with it then I won't either..

 

[adorshki]

When I first saw this I was gonna post an answer that might have been taken wrong, especially after I saw some of the technical advice coming back. BUT I'm gonna submit it now, cause after I saw those GORGEOUS photos, you should know: Jerry Garcia played Starfires from around '65 to at least '68 and that looks exactly like one he used for the first Grateful Dead album. There's definitely some great Starfire work on a CD box set which contains some previuosly unreleased live stuff from '66-'67 at one of the LA acid tests and a couple of other shows. OK, I KNOW the Dead is a highly specialized acquired taste, it even took me a few years, but he's highly respected by lots of great players, and some of that early tone ranges from really woody to "clear as water" as they say in Nashville... and he could get pretty dirty with it too! Just sayin', ALL of that should be possible with one of those... thanks for the photos, here's one for you:
http://www.dozin.com/jers/guitar/history.htm

 

[matsickma]

Not all Starfires III come with the pickups wired out-of-phase. The same is true of the SFXII. I have heard in-phase and out-of -phase wirings. Now I am assuming that no one ever changed the wiring.

This is a good quest for Hans to answer!

If you adjust the volume down from "9" to "7" on one of the pickups the blend of the pickups fills in nicely with just a little upper end nasal tone.

M

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Exactly what I do, thanks.

I was just worried that something was wrong. My fears are now gone and I can enjoy this vintage beauty.

 

[yettoblaster]

Wow. Thanks for the Jerry Garcia gear retrospective, Al.

I had completely forgotten everything before the Travis Beans and the stacked up "JBL skyline 'condominium complex' in silhoutte" that looked like a planetarium city scape! :shock:

 

[Steve Hoffman]

Weird to see Jerry age like that. He looked about the same for 20 years and then, boom!

I think a lot of bands in the 1960's used Guilds, didn't they? Hans would know why but I suspect that Guild was far more open to endorsement deals and had an agent in the music biz who clued them in on up and coming bands. Had to be that (plus the fact that the Guilds were cheaper than Gibson models, correct?)

So many mid 1960's rock bands used Guild, a lot from the West Coast..

Interesting history.