S300/S60/S65/S70 enthusistasts out there?

DrumBob said:

When I worked for Guild, we could hardly give those guitars away, so my opinion is very much clouded by memories of calling dealers to try and blow out factory overstocks at 50+15% on all the S models, and having the dealers blow me off, because they couldn't sell them. I wouldn't own one of those guitars if you paid me. Sorry.

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Hi DrumBob,

as a former Guild employee, do you recollect any information about the Madeira, Burnside, and possibly DeArmond lines? As you can see from my signature I am an "All In" Guild fan, including the imports. It is impossible to get much detailed info about the first two since Avnet and Fender have been involved and sold. I have collected a couple catalogs and PDFs of catalogs - but there is so much unknown... exact years of manufacture / model start & stop (forget about production numbers or serial numbers - since most didn't have any), factories used (rumors like Matsumoku built Madeiras - I have found no evidence of that rumor). I have seen a post of your displeasure of Madeira guitars, I can only say my A-20 went around a quarter of the globe with me in a span of almost 30 years before the bridge lifted off. I still have it and plan on rebuilding it with the help of a Bridge Doctor - but the full resonance of that guitar beat so many other friend's Gibson's Fenders and Yamahas.

Thanks in advance - Peace

Quantum Strummer said:

I'm glad Guild made my S-100s and I think they're fine guitars, but at the same time I can understand why they've never sold that well. Wrong name on the headstock. For all our talk about tone and feel, I'm convinced these things are less important to many (most) players than brand affiliation and the status this brings.

It's a shame Guild never came up with an original electric design that really took off. OTOH it shouldn't be a surprise 'cuz there haven't been many such designs.

-Dave-

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...and the name on the Guitar is the very reason I chose my first S-90. I didn't want a Fender Strat or Tele, or Gibson LP or SG - and I couldn't afford them at 16 anyway. Very happy with my extended family of guitars!

RE: comparison between materials, I agree that everything needs to be the same, even the pots. I can personally attest to the fact that different HB-1s can sound and measure different.

I have two S-300's that are about as identical as you could get except for the body and neck woods. And they sound different in exactly the way that one would expect. I have thought about building a wiring harness with 12 position rotary switches (probably on a PCB) so that volume and tone controls could easily be set to precisely the same position, and then swapping that along with pickups back and forth between the two guitars. The bridge could be swapped as well, but I'd probably leave the tailpieces and tuners alone.

The exercise would mainly be to see if listeners could distinguish between the instruments from recordings.

Hello

A little sidestep - but iterating possible solution for this problem

GAD has very good point. Even if we disconnect all else and wire the pickup directly to i.e. frequency analyzer or anything, we should have same strings and mechanical finger to pluck the strings consistently. And then we see something, that is not so easy to interpret. No matter how much we enlarge the waveform.

I was working at Berns Music MN - it was time, when lots of replacement pickups came to market. So many people asked how this pickup sounds compared to that in neck or bridge position. Naturally it was impossible to know. We thought it would be cool to butcher one solid-body guitar so, that there would be a large opening between neck and bridge. This opening would have wired slots, were one could quickly insert pickups from behind without any tools. The pickups should be pre-mounted in sub-frames.

With this kind guitar one could start with a familiar pickup - tweak the amp to suitable sound - then quickly change between different pickups.

Not particularly complex arrangement - probably not worth it, though - so we never did it.

With help of that "pickup-choosing guitar" we might relatively easy find two or more pickups that are close enough - like have ten players try to distinguish A from B in blind test. Rest of the guitar hardware should be peace of cake. With strings there must be something similar - like pre-testing them in a set-up, where the string is pulled over two points at constant tension and plucked with mechanical finger. Even the there remains the problem with wound strings, that we might never be able to place the strings on two guitars exactly the same way - plain wire strings would be easier.


Finally - if we were to compare different woods - how would we decide, which ash body will present all ash bodies. Since wood is originally living material, there is no guarantee that two blocks sound the same. With large enough resources this whole ordeal could be done with - say ten guitars of each wood. ( Maybe someone should ask the Amazon owner for help. )

Happy tinkering

The pickup testing guitar rig idea has been done by many people. Examples:











And my personal favorite from Symour Duncan:

Oh, I love that last one! Excellent!

walrus

Nuuska said:

Finally - if we were to compare different woods - how would we decide, which ash body will present all ash bodies. Since wood is originally living material, there is no guarantee that two blocks sound the same. With large enough resources this whole ordeal could be done with - say ten guitars of each wood. ( Maybe someone should ask the Amazon owner for help. )

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How many pieces of Cod and Salmon does one need to eat to decide whether or not they are different fish?

GAD

Fantastic - now we have pickup-selecting problem solved - strings are fairly easy - who has the guitars?

DThomasC

"How many pieces of Cod and Salmon does one need to eat to decide whether or not they are different fish?"

Any two pieces - one maple, the other mahogany will be different and easy to tell apart - but the quest was to find TYPICAL difference between maple and mahogany - hence not just any two pieces, that might be anything - why are there these DUDs ???

DThomasC said:

How many pieces of Cod and Salmon does one need to eat to decide whether or not they are different fish?

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Being a fish lover, I'm glad to have the variety.
I'll have the mixed sashimi platter, thank you!

Nuuska said:

- why are there these DUDs ???

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Perhaps there really are no duds and one man's sashimi is merely another man's lutefisk?

That lutefisk recipe leads to chicken recipe they have in Lapland.

It only takes five easy steps to produce delicious soup .

First - Cook a chicken for two hours in COLD water - throw the water away.
Second - Cook the chicken for two hours in Hot water - throw the water away.
Third - Cook a chicken for two hours in COLD milk - throw the milk away.
Fourth - Cook the chicken for two hours in Hot milk - throw the milk away.
Fifth - Cook the chicken for two seconds in COLD alcohol - throw the chicken away.
Enjoy

Hah! That sounds just like what I do when my Swedish in-laws decide to have a surströmming feast. I stick with the aquavit instead.

I've always wanted to try to set up a guitar for pickup testing by using quick connectors on pots both PUs and pots, but I've never gotten around to it. It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to engineer a solution for testing humbuckers.

jp said:

Hah! That sounds just like what I do when my Swedish in-laws decide to have a surströmming feast. I stick with the aquavit instead.

I've always wanted to try to set up a guitar for pickup testing by using quick connectors on pots both PUs and pots, but I've never gotten around to it. It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to engineer a solution for testing humbuckers.

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That’s the path I’ve taken with my pickup testing.

b0rn2w0rsh1p said:

Hi DrumBob,

as a former Guild employee, do you recollect any information about the Madeira, Burnside, and possibly DeArmond lines? As you can see from my signature I am an "All In" Guild fan, including the imports. It is impossible to get much detailed info about the first two since Avnet and Fender have been involved and sold. I have collected a couple catalogs and PDFs of catalogs - but there is so much unknown... exact years of manufacture / model start & stop (forget about production numbers or serial numbers - since most didn't have any), factories used (rumors like Matsumoku built Madeiras - I have found no evidence of that rumor). I have seen a post of your displeasure of Madeira guitars, I can only say my A-20 went around a quarter of the globe with me in a span of almost 30 years before the bridge lifted off. I still have it and plan on rebuilding it with the help of a Bridge Doctor - but the full resonance of that guitar beat so many other friend's Gibson's Fenders and Yamahas.

Thanks in advance - Peace

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I'm sorry to say, I didn't see your post until just now. I visit this forum only occasionally. I worked at Guild in Elizabeth, NJ from '79-81 and handled customer service, artist relations, procurement, R&D, and pretty much everything else Neil Lilien didn't want to do. I ordered strings from D'Addario, dealt with the sales reps, made sales calls to Guild dealers trying to unload overstocked items (and never got one cent in commission), handled dealer and customer problems and issues, and was frequently the whipping boy for mistakes made by others, people like sales manager Ramon Portal.

I'm afraid I can't give you much information you seek. I remember the Madeira guitars were made in Korea (I think) and Japan. The low end Korean stuff was crap. Many of them came back with badly warped necks, lifted bridges, split tops and so forth. No lie, we used to throw them in the dumpster, or we'd joke around and smash them to splinters on the cement floor in the warehouse. The better Madeiras were Japanese, and most of them were well made. At that point in time, Japan was starting to come into their own as guitar builders. I don't remember the model names. I had nothing to do with Burnside or DeArmond stuff, as those came about after my time passed at Guild.

Hi Everybody, just joined this community and thought I'd let you know about my Guild. It's a white 1979 S-300, serial No. 202502, with HB-1s. I bought it new, probably about 1985 from Jeavons, a guitar shop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which has long since gone. That it had sat in the shop for so long is a reflection of the models ugly duckling reputation, but, of course, it is really a swan! Best electric guitar I have ever played, bar none. I paid £330 and it was slightly shop soiled, with a bit of a ding to the top of the headstock and the trim missing off one of the knobs. Over the years it has inevitably picked up a few more dings, but is still as good as ever:cheerful:

Prince of Darkness said:

Hi Everybody, just joined this community and thought I'd let you know about my Guild. It's a white 1979 S-300, serial No. 202502, with HB-1s.

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Hello Prince of Darkness,

Welcome! An S-300 in White with HB-1s is a really nice combination. Hope you will enjoy it for a long time!

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl

Thank you Hans, your welcome is very much appreciated. I really love that guitar and need to find time to play it more than I have been recently. Been spending a lot of my time in recent years playing Mandolin family instruments and recently tried Portuguese Guitar, though I never really managed to get my head around the tuning and ended up tuning it a bit like a regular twelve string, but up a fifth. Still, it's been my favourite guitar for over 30 years and I expect it will still be my favourite in 30 years time, if I'm still around :victorious:

Great thread! I also share the enthusiasm for these guitars. I own a 78 and a 79 S300D and a 78 S60D.

I got my first one nearly 15 years ago and it immediately became my touring solid body.

A couple of pictures of my S-300.
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Very cool!