Category: Guitar

One of my favorite guitars is the 2000 Guild Starfire IV that I reviewed here. I bought the guitar in this review because it’s from 1998 which means that it has the Seymour Duncan made SD-1 pickups in it and I get a fair number of questions about them. Since I didn’t have a guitar in the current collection that sported these fine pickups, I decided to buy this guitar so that I could do things like A/B it against my other Starfire and swap the pickups in order to do some pickup comparisons for an article I’m working on.

While this guitar is very similar to the 2000 Starfire IV mentioned above, it is also different in some ways that may not be obvious at first glance. Is it good enough to replace one of my favorite Guilds? Let’s find out.  (more…)

Ahh, the Guild S300. Ain’t nothin’ else quite like it. Of course, that’s mostly because it’s pretty odd looking, but ask almost anyone who’s owned one and they’ll tell you how much it rocks. I’ve owned four and yes, they all rocked. Hard.

A Guild S300A-D was my only guitar for over 20 years and as a result I have a soft spot for these odd-looking beasts, so when the opportunity presented itself for me to score a 1981 Guild S300, I jumped on it. I needed to own this 1981 S300 both because I was without an S300 at the time and because I wanted to write about one of my favorite guitars which I could only do properly with one in hand. As luck would have it, the one that landed in my lap happened to be in almost like-new condition. Let’s take a look. (more…)

Curious about a Guild I had never seen in person, let alone owned, I snagged this guitar through Craigslist for a reasonable price with the sole intention of writing it up here.

The Guild S-275 is a bit different than most of the Guilds I own while also being a typical Guild. It’s a very interesting guitar in that it seems to be designed to appeal to both Strat and Les Paul buyers in the hopes of being the best of both worlds. Does it measure up? Let’s see how it fares as I put it through my normal evaluation routine.  (more…)

There are many Guild Starfires, but this one is mine. Well, this is one of several of mine, but this one is special to me because it was the first Guild I bought when I got back into playing guitar around 2008 or so. I bought it sight unseen for $1200 after someone at Norm’s Rare Guitars gave me an in-hand description of it over the phone. It was mint and I had to have it.

This guitar ruined me for other guitars in a number or ways and though it is almost perfect for me in every way, it is not without its faults. Naturally I will outline whatever faults I feel this guitar has in excruciating detail right along side my gushing praise for all of the guitar’s many merits. As someone who’s owned far too many Guilds, what could possibly make this one so great?  (more…)

If you’ve read any of my work then you may know that I can be a tad obsessive. Take, for example, this Guild X-500T. I already owned two Guild X500s (reviewed here) which were great, and I currently own a Guild Starfire III-90, but what I really wanted was an X-500 with a Guildsby and P90s. Oh yeah, and with a 1 11/16″ neck at the nut since that’s one of the other things I obsess about. I also like red in my sunburst guitars. But how would I possible ever find such a beast? Why, through constant trolling through Reverb, eBay, Forums, Craigslist, and such, that’s how!

Is this guitar everything I’ve ever wanted in a full-sized Rockabilly Jazz box? Let’s find out.  (more…)

I’m not really much of a jazz player, but there’s something about a nice jazz box guitar that intrigues me. Perhaps it’s the generally high-end appointments, or maybe it’s the lure of an instrument that begs to be mastered. Whatever the reason, over the years I’ve found myself in possession of various Guild jazz guitars all of which have been either X-500s or X-170s. I covered a couple of 1980s X-500s in this article, and for this write-up I’ll be focusing on X-170s, all of which are from 1994 or later. I’ll spend a lot of this post reviewing this beautiful sunburst X-170 from 1994 because, well, just look at it!  (more…)

I’m not really much of a Jazz player, but I am a guitar guy and I’m definitely a Guild guitar guy, so when the chance came about to buy a Guild X-500 made in 1984, I jumped at the chance under the premise that it would inspire me to brush up on my jazz chops.

Being a gear hound, the chance for a second X-500 of similar vintage (1986) was too good to pass up so I ended up with two of these big ‘ol Guilds and thought, “Why not write about them?” and here we are.

These guitar were a bit of a challenge for me to write about because their proper use is a bit outside of my comfort zone. They are guitars, however, and me being me, I was not afraid to sit down and run them through their paces in order to write up what I could about the instruments. Let’s dig in and see how they fared.

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After buying, playing, and testing a 1975 M-80 CS, I decided to see about scoring an early ’80s model to see how it differed. I managed to score this tobacco burst beauty for a great price and sat down to play it, eagerly anticipating my first outing with not only a 1980’s Guild, but my first experience with Guild’s XR-7 pickups.

This guitar is unlike most of the Guilds I’ve owned in some ways while still retaining the core elements of what makes Guilds such a great guitars. But first, a bit of an introduction about Guild M-80s is in order.  (more…)