New to Guilds and to this forum

Welcome, BBD!! Good to see you here. We LOVE photos. Use the instructions above. At first it seems daunting but you'll get the hang of it. And the OOOOOH's and AAAAHHHHH's you'll get will make you happy.

Hey Mr. Hemingway: You and I live in parallel universes. I too recently bought a NS X175 and just love it. And like you I just joined the Guild forum. I had the dealer pin my bridge and my bigsby works perfectly, and really stays in tune. I also bought a little gadget for my Bigsby called the Vibromate spoiler, http://www.vibramate.com/vibramate-string-spoiler.php

An expensive little thing but it makes my vibrato work even better and changing strings is now a breeze. It was worth it for me.

A couple of weeks ago I competed in the Wyoming International Blues Challenge with the Guild. We got great reviews and ultimately won the competition. However the dange pickups really were humming. I had to turn the guitar volumes way down and complensate by turning up the amp. The pickups as such actually are not hum defeating with both pickups on. But I did some research here and here is how to fix it. I won't try and do this myself, I'll have a professional do it but here is how you can rewire the neck pick up so it is hum canceling when both pickups are on (which is what I use 95% of the time):

Hey there, I always pot my pickups and reverse the polarity. It completely cancels any single coil noise in the middle position. The way to do it is take out the NECK pickup out. Slightly loosen the screws on the bottom of the pickup that hold the plate on, gently push the Magenets about halfway out. Pull each magnet out one at a time and turn it 180 degrees so polarity is reversed. If you played it now the pickups would sound out of phase. Then you revese the leads on the pickup so the what was the hot is now the ground. Now the pickups are back in phase and hum cancelling in the middle position. The reason you do it on the NECK pickup is that its unlikely the strings will hit the polepieces there and ground out your signal. It REALLY kills the hum. Smiert will tell you. No hum.

If you'd like to see mine you can go to my Facebook page, there are a few pics there at Gary Small & the Coyote Bros.

Good luck with your's I am just loving mine aside from the hum nuisance.

The NS series has proven to be quite successful. I can't imagine a better instrument at the price point. I have 3-4 NS Guilds, the fourth has never left the store because it is going to another customer, as soon as he gets back from vacation, but technically I own the CE-100 Capri, an A-150 Savoy, a Starfire III, and, for the time being, a Starfire IV. All of them are great instruments in their own right.