Okay, you've got about 7 hours to guess... '79 Guild content!

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, that'll work!

[JSett]

Ooh I was gonna guess some kind of Guild, but never even seen one of those before. Is that a belly contour but on the front? Crazy

Yeah, there's a weird contour on the front too. There's lots of variations of this shape with different pickup configurations but apparently this particular model they only made about 250 of!

Wow that thing is wild I love it

Yeah, you should see the wiring more on that in a minute

Dang, don't know why I didn't think of that.

Those are super cool guitars. Never played one before. How's the neck profile?

The neck is very similar to an AVRI Jazzmaster, just with a much flatter radius. nut is about 1 5/8", maybe a smidge over. Very comfortable and familiar...didn't feel like I needed to adapt at all.

Never seen one of these either but you've got a Guild with the sexiest ever headstock!!
I love these Westerly era ones with the yellowy MOP (identical to my '77 D50).

Yeah, that headstock is a big ol' paddle!

[Embenny]

Nice. Sounds like it's basically a more interesting-looking hardtail strat, which is something I can get behind.

Are those the original pickups? Does the neck position do the "strat thing," or is the scale length/wood/bridge too different for it to fall in that camp?

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, that headstock is a big ol' paddle!

In a Guild video I saw (about an acoustic) they talk about how the big headstock adds mass and weight and contributes to the sound.

So, let's go for that.

[JSett]

Nice. Sounds like it's basically a more interesting-looking hardtail strat, which is something I can get behind.

Are those the original pickups? Does the neck position do the "strat thing," or is the scale length/wood/bridge too different for it to fall in that camp?

Well, I might as well put this write-up attached to this post as it answers all the questions one might have ...

Okay. So, here goes with an immediate review of sorts.

Neck feels great, very Fender-y. Not heavy at all and the overall balance on a strap is pretty good. Now, this very limited variation of this Guild line comes with 3 Dimarzio Super Distortion Singles (SDS-1). Turning over the scratchplate shows they are all the Patent Applied For era, which is good stuff.

The controls. Wow, here's the fun bit. So you have a Volume and Tone plus a 5-way selector. Then you have a 'bypass' switch and a Phase switch, both of which are interactive with each other AND with the 5-way so it's a wild ride trying to work out even what pickup is on and if they are then in phase with each other.

Confused? Me too and, to make matters worse, someone's also been at the wiring on this one I spent an hour trying to figure it all out before pulling the guard off and taking a look as, for the life of me, I couldn't even get just the bridge pickup to be active on it's own. I can't find a wiring diagram yet either, just a User Manual. I will email Guild to see if they have anything on file to help. So, as a stopgap, I have dropped the entire harness out and carefully detached one pickup and connected it to a new 500k pot and to the jack so it's just in a Jr setup. It sounds fabulous...a real late 70's rock n roll machine.

[garyptaszek]

sounds like its wired basically like my 12 string Dano, but with an extra switch adding the neck or bridge pickup to the middle pickup. Shouldn't be too difficult to figure out... or just stick to what you're doing with the bridge pickup.
Personally I'd stick a nice 3 way switch in there, master volume, and tone just for the bridge pickup (that's what I was thinking while this guitar was still in my reverb watch list )

[Embenny]

OK, so the stock wiring would just be your average 7-way Strat diagram with a phase switch on the middle pickup.
So all you do is wire the middle pickup to the phase switch, then to the 5-way. You then add the bridge pickup toggle for your typical 7-way arrangement.

No idea what it's currently wired as, but that's how you'd do it if you wanted to restore it.

[JSett]

OK, so the stock wiring would just be your average 7-way Strat diagram with a phase switch on the middle pickup.
So all you do is wire the middle pickup to the phase switch, then to the 5-way. You then add the bridge pickup toggle for your typical 7-way arrangement.

No idea what it's currently wired as, but that's how you'd do it if you wanted to restore it.

Wait, what? "Average 7 way Strat"? I thought it was only 3 or 5 way on those I mean, I've never actually owned a Strat so that might explain why that's so alien to me.

I've bundled up the OG harness so it's an easy reversal back to 'stock' should the time come and, if that 7 way thing is common enough then a diagram will be easy to find.

[Embenny]

Wait, what? "Average 7 way Strat"? I thought it was only 3 or 5 way on those I mean, I've never actually owned a Strat so that might explain why that's so alien to me.

I've bundled up the OG harness so it's an easy reversal back to 'stock' should the time come and, if that 7 way thing is common enough then a diagram will be easy to find.

For about 40 years, it's been common for people to add a toggle or push/pull switch to a 5-way strat switch. You can wire it to either the neck or the bridge pickup. It's a simple on/off switch that adds that pickup to whatever the 5-way switch has selected. That way, you can get neck + bridge and neck+middle+bridge.

G&L does that as standard on most of their 3-pickup models, and Fender has offered it on many strats as well, though it took them way longer to do it than many other companies.

[JSett]

Gotcha. Well, not going to lie, that's way more options than I'll ever need or use so I doubt I'll mess with it much unless I decide to move it on (Gary has already called dibs on it too...almost like he knows what I'm like )

[Pacafeliz]

DUDE!!!
I was writing with a guy in Sweden that was selling his on Reverb but pulled out after getting the Ricky instead.

SDS-1 is my all time fav single coil pickup, what I have in my BroncoMaster (the one you kinda wanted for a while).

I have my S-300D which is just as cool. These are so underrated, and I used it to record some parts last month.

(still my fav pic)

That was a GOOD buy i tell you!!!

[JSett]

DUDE!!!
I was writing with a guy in Sweden that was selling his on Reverb but pulled out after getting the Ricky instead.

SDS-1 is my all time fav single coil pickup, what I have in my BroncoMaster (the one you kinda wanted for a while).

I have my S-300D which is just as cool. These are so underrated, and I used it to record some parts last month.

(still my fav pic)

That was a GOOD buy i tell you!!!

There's been a few of the 70s Guilds on my radar for a while but just hadn't got around to finding the right deal. £500 in the end, dropped off in person to my door

[s_mcsleazy]

best guild i ever played was one of these with dual single coil dimarzios. plus i love mecca normal and david used a guild.

[Surfysonic]

Congrats & enjoy, Johnny! I've got a couple of Guild hollowbody guitars on my GAS list. Back in 2007 or so, a friend gave me her recently passed husband's Guild S300-D (1980s?).

[JSett]

This is how it currently sits, and I'm pretty inclined to keep it this way...



I'd kinda forgotten how a 24¾" scale felt. That slight extra slinkiness over a 25½. Also, maybe it's subconscious, but all I want to play on it seems to be post-punk spiky stuff

The dude I bought it from works at a London recording studio and it was gifted to him years ago by a band called 'The Feeling' (a UK pop-rock band that had about a year of being rather big and chart success) and has been used on a recent-ish Thurston solo record called 'By The Fire'. I have no proof of this provenance however so...pinch of salt etc. However, the dude selling it is credited on the album as 'recorded by' so I'm inclined to believe him.