Did I miss some Newark Street changes?

kakerlak · Jun 23, 2020

Look at this M-75 for sale on Reverb:

Finish looks much browner/darker, with a more subtle burst that's more of a rim burst than the heavy-shouldered burst I'm used to seeing. Also a tortie guard and sporting a made in China sticker. Are these no longer Korean?

https://reverb.com/item/33677022-guild-newark-st-collection-m-75-aristocrat-hollow-body-electric-guitar-antique-burst

chazmo · Jun 23, 2020

Looks like it, kakerlak... I have some vague memory of a discussion of MIC Newark Streets, but honestly I haven't really been paying much attention.

Nice looking guitar. I'm moving this thread to the electric/solidbody section since it raises a good question.

GGJaguar · Jun 23, 2020

And it has control cavity covers that the Korean-made version did not!

fronobulax · Jun 23, 2020

I can't find it but there are some Newark Street guitars that are MIC instead of MIK. The "new" Starfires, I believe and maybe one of the solid bodies? With more motivation I might find confirmation since I think GAD discussed/documented some of this in a review or two.

kakerlak · Jun 23, 2020

GGJaguar said:
And it has control cavity covers that the Korean-made version did not!

Oh jeez -- didn't even notice that! Photos aren't the best, but that doesn't necessarily look like a spruce top. I wonder if it's solid or semi-so.

kakerlak · Jun 23, 2020

Also sort of looks like an ebony board.

GGJaguar · Jun 23, 2020

Made in Korea (left), Made in China (right)

GGJaguar · Jun 23, 2020

kakerlak said:
Also sort of looks like an ebony board.

And different pickguard. And possibly different binding.

DThomasC · Jun 23, 2020

That's one of the new line of Aristocrats along with the "HH" models, all MIC. They are solidbody guitars, or maybe chambered. The fully hollow Aristocrat is still MIK (as far as I know.)

kakerlak · Jun 23, 2020

DThomasC said:
That's one of the new line of Aristocrats along with the "HH" models, all MIC. They are solidbody guitars, or maybe chambered. The fully hollow Aristocrat is still MIK (as far as I know.)

Weird. So specs call it chambered with carved spruce top and pau ferro fretboard. I like it better than the flame veneer-topped humbucker models, I guess

chazmo · Jun 23, 2020

K, I wonder if they're staining the fretboard. Agreed it looks pretty black to me, like ebony. And, I also agree that doesn't look much like spruce, altghough it's hard to tell.

DThomasC · Jun 23, 2020

I never even noticed that the "P90" model has a spruce top. I'm still pouting over the fact that they call the new instruments Aristocrats instead of Bluesbirds. This version is suddenly more interesting to me. I'll withhold final judgement until I have one in hand, but $800 might be too much for a MIC instrument these days. I paid less than half of that for my Epiphone ES339 P90 pro.

chazmo · Jun 23, 2020

^Street price (or perhaps eStreet price, these days) might be lower, DTC.

guitarlover · Jun 23, 2020

The aristocrat from Korea is a fully hollow guitar. This chinese version is a guitar with considerable weight relief but not fully hollow. There are also models with humbuckers .

DThomasC · Jun 23, 2020

chazmo said:
^Street price (or perhaps eStreet price, these days) might be lower, DTC.

MSRP is $1115. I take the $800 price on Reverb to be the street price. But, you're right that it might be available elsewhere for less.

GAD · Jun 23, 2020

Many Newark St. Guilds are made in China, and its a little upsetting to me that it's not made obvious which. In some guitars it's the name (Jetstars are Chinese) in some it's the finish and/or pickups (Aristocrat P90-Vintage Sunburst), though in this case they've made it a solid-body instead of a hollow-body, too. Then the Starfire Is are made in Indonesia but don't get me started on the Starfire I name again.

None of that is clear to the end buyer and I have a problem with that but they're clearly not marketing to me; I think they're marketing to the younger crowd who doesn't care where things are made. Entire generations of people have grown up listening to MP3 compressed music through cheap import ear-pods in a world where you throw something away when it breaks, and what's mediocre-good quality to me is high quality to them.

chazmo · Jun 23, 2020

It's not too surprising that they've obscured the origin of the Newark Streets these days, I guess. When Fender introduced these back years ago, they were really trying to stay reasonably true to the old designs. They were careful not to say re-issues, but frankly that's what they were for the most part.

CMG isn't playing that game anymore, I guess.

And, totally agree, GAD.... Country of origin really should be CLEAR and OBVIOUS. But, as you say, we are dinosaurs from that point of view.

Bonneville88 · Jun 23, 2020

Agreed - that's one thing that was handled well regarding DeArmonds:

guitarlover · Jul 4, 2020

Guild Aristocrat HH and P90 review

A single-cut with class and bearing, the Aristocrat wears Guild's guitar-making heritage well

www.musicradar.com

There is a review on musicradar now. There is a considerable weight difference between the real hollow and the chambered guitars from 2020.

SFIV1967 · Jul 4, 2020

chazmo said:
It's not too surprising that they've obscured the origin of the Newark Streets these days.

The serial numbers make it pretty clear (see below link) and all new models without f-holes have "Made in China" or "Made in Korea" stickers to show the CoO. Now I agree that those stickers will disappear once the first onwer had them, so the DeArmond example was done better!

GAD said:
Many Newark St. Guilds are made in China, and its a little upsetting to me that it's not made obvious which.

I tried to explain the serial number system for the various factories as good as possible in post #7 of this link. There are also links to example pictures in the post:

Where are NS Guilds made?

This may have been covered previously, but in case it has not: https://samick.fandom.com/wiki/SPG_Musical_Instruments_Co.

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Did I miss some Newark Street changes?

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