Guild X-350

[dapmdave]

Stunning example! Congrats.

 

[Zelja]

The switches looked pretty simple. My luthier had no trouble cleaning them up and re-doing some solder joints. They work fine now. As far as function for a player, I think there have been better ways to preform the same function.

Also, Guild originally installed several capacitors and resistors in the circuitry from the pickups to the switches to attenuate the output and limit distortion. After playing the guitar with these we decided to take them out. The guitar has a much more modern and versatile sound without this attenuation. It can still sound very pure and jazzy but it will now distort before it starts to feed back and give you a rockabilly sound. Before it sounded like it had a bit of cotton in it. Obviously I saved all of the parts.

Thanks for the info.

Sounds like getting rid of the resistors/caps (I guess wired as some sort of filters) is a good idea. I'm with you - just let me hear the unadulterated sound of the pickups please.

Once again, congratulations on the superb specimen you have there. Just a pleasure to look at the pics so I can imagine the fun you are having!

 

[SFIV1967]

Zelko: I just found those pictures of an older X-350, looks pretty wild!

Ralf

 

[Little Johnny]

Zelko: I just found those pictures of an older X-350, looks pretty wild!

Ralf,

That's exactly what it looked like. I think mine was not quite as cruddy but I now just have a bag with all of those filter caps and resistors in it and...I think...a better or at least more modern sounding guitar.

There is sort of a corollary in Gibson history. I own a fairly early Gibson ES-355 which has a the stock chicken-head dial/switch on the top which has 6 "Tone/Filter" settings. When you take the Gibson operation apart you find out that setting #1, the least filtered, still does not give you no filter. I know people who have taken this switch out of the circuit on their Gibson ES 345-355 guitars and I know people who have rewired so that setting #1 has no filter. Mine is stock because it seems to sound great just the way it is. Anyway, this is probably all a relic of an age when people did not want any "distortion".

 

[guildman63]

Technology is much better now, so distortion is much easier to control on the other end.

 

[Zelja]

Zelko: I just found those pictures of an older X-350, looks pretty wild!

Thanks for taking the time to dig those up Detective Ralf, great bit of info! Wild indeed! I wonder if that switch assembly was built especially for the guitar or perhaps it was originally commissioned by NASA & Guild got some excess stock? Regardless, it's an impressive bit of kit for a 50s guitar.

 

[Walter Broes]

Well, those switch things were in triple pickup Epiphones before they were in Guilds, weren't they?

 

[Little Johnny]

Well, those switch things were in triple pickup Epiphones before they were in Guilds, weren't they?

Yes they were. Someone told me that they are close to the switching arrangement in an early Hamilton Beach Blender.

 

[FNG]

Love those tuner buttons.

 

[Little Johnny]

Love those tuner buttons.

The tuner buttons are really cool but I do have to say, that if there is one deficiency this guitar has, as a player it is that it doesn't stay in tune. This is probably because the tuners are old but I do have Gibsons and Fenders that are this old which stay in tune forever and the Westerly Guild DV-52 can stay in its case for a couple of months and come out amazingly close to in tune.