JS 2 backplate/electrics

[BrendanBass]

Hi guys. I recently bought a JS2 and am stoked!
I'm trying to learn a little more history about the below, and hoping someone can help out:

-The serial number on the headstock puts it in 1972 as does the matching serial number under the backplate.
JSBassNB 70104. However, at the bottom of the sticker it ALSO has a second number 72830 in the same handwriting. I haven't seen this on other photos when searching. I'm wondering if it is a date, as it fits, common practice etc?

-Also, the cover is the same shape as '71 photos I've seen, not the more rounded cover on other '72's. Was there a change over mid way through '72? A friend mentioned something about a factory move around that period??

-Everything under there looks original (to an electrics novice) except possibly a wire has been re-soldered and BUT more importantly the capacitors are the green ones like other examples I've noticed in photos of later Guilds. I'm curious if they were in use then or changed? I suspect the latter. I can't attach the photo and don't yet have any image hosting. There are a couple of marks on the finish and screw wear suggesting it's been taken off a few times.
I'm really excited about his bass and would be thankful for any insight,
cheers Brendan

 

[fronobulax]

Welcome.

My "I am the original owner" '71 JS doesn't have a label (which was to be expected circa 1971) so I don't know why there are two numbers. Presumably one matched the headstock? (Never mind. Just saw the word "matching").

Factory move was completed by 1970 so any changes in the JS almost certainly had another cause.

I had not noted the change in cover shape until I a discussion in the electric section with some S-100 owners but until I find the thread I think the transition was in 1972.

My capacitors are browinish yellow.

 

[BrendanBass]

Thanks Frono!
I just figured out how to put an image on.

 

[chazmo]

Brendan, meant to welcome you yesterday when I edited and approved your first post. Hope you enjoy your stay with us. Welcome aboard. -- Chaz

 

[BrendanBass]

Thanks for having me Chaz!
The forum has been a great resource leading up to buying my bass, much appreciated.
I had been looking at early 60's EB0's for a long while, but the JS2 and it's neck pick up are far more interesting and better suit my playing needs. Veeeery happy I got it.
cheers,
Brendan

 

[fronobulax]

So the NB at the end of your model number should mean "Nature Boy" as the finish.

Below is close to what I would expect for NB.

But your cavity pic looks much more like mine which is a Walnut (WAL) finish. Camera tricks? Natural finish over a darker wood than we're used to seeing? Something else?

Always nice to see a JS get some love and attention since the humbuckers and the tone switch seem to be acquired tastes :wink:

 

[BrendanBass]

Ah... the plot thickens Frono.

the above photo is better color indication of the body than the second photo below.

This one shows the color change from body to neck timber that I've seen on another example somewhere in my searches, not sure how common that is.
Excuse the kitchen table photographic studio!!

 

[Happy Face]

Thanks for having me Chaz!
The forum has been a great resource leading up to buying my bass, much appreciated.
I had been looking at early 60's EB0's for a long while, but the JS2 and it's neck pick up are far more interesting and better suit my playing needs. Veeeery happy I got it.
cheers,
Brendan

A wise decision, Brendan. Welcome!

 

[mavuser]

JSBassNB 70104. However, at the bottom of the sticker it ALSO has a second number 72830 in the same handwriting. I haven't seen this on other photos when searching. I'm wondering if it is a date, as it fits, common practice etc?

-Also, the cover is the same shape as '71 photos I've seen, not the more rounded cover on other '72's. Was there a change over mid way through '72? A friend mentioned something about a factory move around that period??

-Everything under there looks original (to an electrics novice) except possibly a wire has been re-soldered and BUT more importantly the capacitors are the green ones like other examples I've noticed in photos of later Guilds. I'm curious if they were in use then or changed? I suspect the latter.

Brendan, our serial #s on the headstock are 4 off each other, as mine is 70100. my sticker also has a second #, not as close but still pretty close. based on what we know i am most confident the second # on the sticker represents the date. so even though our necks may have been stamped possibly even the same day-the instruments completion date when they put that sticker on must happen a little later, and vary more. my bass is a JS1, for whatever that is worth.

my second # is 72915...Sept 15, 1972. your # would represent August 30, 1972. a difference of 2 weeks.

of course this is simply a hypothesis, and why they would do this on just a small handfull of instruments, i couldnt say. maybe they started it at the new factory, but then figured it would seem too confusing and out of order since headstock stamp dates and final completion dates were not necassarily corresponding.

i also have the green capacitors. Frono if yours are different, i question if that equals a difference in sound and/or functionality. i have been meaning to start a thread or continue an old one on the subject of the "deep hard switch" on my JS1. when in the one position it sounds nothing like the quintessential "sludgebucker." my uneducated guess is the DH switch is a "coil tap" or "coil splitter" and makes it a single coil. it sounds like a mix between a standup and a fender bass like that. nothing like the humbucker. dare i say it sounds more like the bisonic that the humbucker? it sounds NOTHING like the humbucker. if i flick that switch- its all humbuker, just as all of you describe. but i havnt played in that mode much yet. the deep hard switch is like night and day.

back to the subject of this thread and what I can contribute, for what its worth my sticker is a slightly different variation than Brendans. i guess it came off a different roll.

and Frono, just for you...someone 40 years ago wrote on the sticker "Jet Star Bass 1 Walnut" straight from the factory. no intitals or codes whatsoever. no "JS1," no"NB"...

...gotta love that vintage gold foil in the cavity!

my pictures are either waaaay too big or a little too small so for now heres a smaller one.
i will post the large one in a separate post. please feel free to remove it, or to tell me to remove it, if it is doing more bad than good. cheers!

 

[mavuser]

 

[fronobulax]

The color does look like Nature Boy so there was a quirk in the photo or my monitor.

I just reported the capacitor colors because they were mentioned. I don't recall color coding to indicate the value on a capacitor, the way it does on a resistor.

I like the date label theory. Maybe Hans Moust will comment.

Closest my JS ever sounded to my Starfire was when I compared them with rounds.

Everyone who has looked at the diagrams below has said that the tone switch is a treble cut - high frequencies go to ground. If the diagrams are correct and complete, which I believe them to be, then there is no support for the coil tap theory.

 

[BrendanBass]

Frono, it was my night time photography. It sounds like my capacitors and back plate fit the bill, terrific.
Thanks for the info Mavuser and Frono. I hope Hans comments too.
To have fun hypothesizing further on the second number, the two weeks extra, sits on labor day weekend/end of summer holiday. Over theorizing I know, but there was also a rock festival on in Illinois/Indiana at that time, perfect time and incentive to take holidays and leave your workbench as is?
Appreciated,
brendan

 

[bklynbass]

I like the date label theory. Maybe Hans Moust will comment.

According to his book, they sometimes used a stamped number that "appear to be a dating code" on the labels sometimes right around 1972 (it's on the botton of page 11 when he's talking about labels). So, knowing guild did all sorts of things outside the norm it's not inconceivable that they sometimes wrote the dating code instead of stamping it.

 

[hansmoust]

..... of course this is simply a hypothesis, and why they would do this on just a small handfull of instruments, i couldnt say.

Hello mavuser,

We're past the point of a hypothesis; it's already common knowledge. I wrote about these dates on page 29 of The Guild Guitar Book. They didn't do this on just a handfull of instruments. They did it on each and every one of them, but only during a short period.
At the time I wrote the book ( mid-'90s) I had only seen the stamped dates. Further research has shown that the ink-stamped dates were preceded by written dates that followed the same dating pattern as the later ink-stamped ones. At this point it looks like the hand-written dates were applied for about a month.

back to the subject of this thread and what I can contribute, for what its worth my sticker is a slightly different variation than Brendans. i guess it came off a different roll.

Yes, the label came from a different roll. It is the new label that was introduced around that time ( also on page 29 of The Guild Guitar Book). The dating info actually gives us a pretty good idea when the new label was first used. In the book I gave 'around the end of 1972' as the period that the label change took place. With all the information that I gathered since then, I can now safely say that the change took place during the August/ September 1972 period. The overlap was caused by what labels were still on the bench of the worker who completed the instrument. For the electrics it usually would be a different person than for the acoustics.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[mavuser]

Everyone who has looked at the diagrams below has said that the tone switch is a treble cut - high frequencies go to ground. If the diagrams are correct and complete, which I believe them to be, then there is no support for the coil tap theory.

I am certainly not arguing that- and furthermore making no claim that I even fully understand what a "treble cut" equates to sonically. In the simplest of terms, I find that my bass to my ears...when the switch is in the one position has little or nothing in common with the quintessential humbucker sound that it has with the switch in the other position. i have read countless comments on this site regarding the humbucker, but little or none regarding the humbucker with the "Deep Hard switch" in the "other" position. I find it to sound fantastic that way thus both surprised and curious that there has not been more banter about it.

Hans-thanks for the info! I put your book on my holiday list a couple weeks ago at the suggestion of LTG member Ralf. barring any surprises, I expect to have it by the end of the year. if not i will acquire it soon after. Thanks Ralf for the heads up. cheers all and Happy Holidays!

 

[fronobulax]

I am certainly not arguing that- and furthermore making no claim that I even fully understand what a "treble cut" equates to sonically. In the simplest of terms, I find that my bass to my ears...when the switch is in the one position has little or nothing in common with the quintessential humbucker sound that it has with the switch in the other position. i have read countless comments on this site regarding the humbucker, but little or none regarding the humbucker with the "Deep Hard switch" in the "other" position. I find it to sound fantastic that way thus both surprised and curious that there has not been more banter about it.

OK. I can't always predict what signal processing will do to tone, but a coil tap to convert a humbucker to a single coil and a treble cut are two radically different things electrically, Since you were talking about tone and not electronics, we're good.

With the switch in one position I hear very little difference between the bridge and neck PUs. There is a sonic difference to me but it is slight. In the other position they are very different and the neck PU is deep, thumpy, mushy or indistinct. It is not a crisp sound but something you wallow in. When I don't want people to know I am playing the wrong notes, I can tweak things so that all people hear is a thump.

I think the humbucker JS has a very limited tone palette but what it does, it does well. However I prefer the tone from the Bisonic, which is also, in its own way limited. However the Pilot is actually the most versatile of my basses when the goal is to have a wide variety of tones.

My anecdotal observations is that people who have both a Bisonic (or Dark Star) bass and a one with Guild humbuckers tend to prefer the former. But people whose yardstick is a Gibson EB-3 often prefer the Guild. It's all good.

 

[mavuser]

I am certainly not arguing that- and furthermore making no claim that I even fully understand what a "treble cut" equates to sonically. In the simplest of terms, I find that my bass to my ears...when the switch is in the one position has little or nothing in common with the quintessential humbucker sound that it has with the switch in the other position. i have read countless comments on this site regarding the humbucker, but little or none regarding the humbucker with the "Deep Hard switch" in the "other" position. I find it to sound fantastic that way thus both surprised and curious that there has not been more banter about it.

OK. I can't always predict what signal processing will do to tone, but a coil tap to convert a humbucker to a single coil and a treble cut are two radically different things electrically, Since you were talking about tone and not electronics, we're good.

With the switch in one position I hear very little difference between the bridge and neck PUs. There is a sonic difference to me but it is slight. In the other position they are very different and the neck PU is deep, thumpy, mushy or indistinct. It is not a crisp sound but something you wallow in. When I don't want people to know I am playing the wrong notes, I can tweak things so that all people hear is a thump.

I think the humbucker JS has a very limited tone palette but what it does, it does well. However I prefer the tone from the Bisonic, which is also, in its own way limited. However the Pilot is actually the most versatile of my basses when the goal is to have a wide variety of tones.

My anecdotal observations is that people who have both a Bisonic (or Dark Star) bass and a one with Guild humbuckers tend to prefer the former. But people whose yardstick is a Gibson EB-3 often prefer the Guild. It's all good.

i get it now, thanks for elaborating on those details.

 

[hieronymous]

i have been meaning to start a thread or continue an old one on the subject of the "deep hard switch" on my JS1. when in the one position it sounds nothing like the quintessential "sludgebucker." my uneducated guess is the DH switch is a "coil tap" or "coil splitter" and makes it a single coil. it sounds like a mix between a standup and a fender bass like that. nothing like the humbucker. dare i say it sounds more like the bisonic that the humbucker? it sounds NOTHING like the humbucker. if i flick that switch- its all humbuker, just as all of you describe. but i havnt played in that mode much yet. the deep hard switch is like night and day.

I think you should start a thread - it would be nice to have it sorted out. My tech told me it was capacitors, presumably one rolling off the treble (deep?) and one rolling off some bass (hard???) but I'm just guessing. I'm thinking of having that switch completely disabled and let the full range of the neck humbucker through to be shaped off-board, as some others here have done.

In case you do start a new thread, here's an image for it!

 

[mavuser]

I think you should start a thread - it would be nice to have it sorted out. My tech told me it was capacitors, presumably one rolling off the treble (deep?) and one rolling off some bass (hard???) but I'm just guessing. I'm thinking of having that switch completely disabled and let the full range of the neck humbucker through to be shaped off-board, as some others here have done.

In case you do start a new thread, here's an image for it!

ahh man just when I had put it to rest! haha. i will start a thread on the humbucker indeed and get to the bottom of everything though. i do think i have it figured out at this point based on all the input. we'll make sure.

pretty sure i had the standard tone of a guild humbucker mixed up with the tone of engaging the "deep hard switch." so when i thought the switch was on, it was actually off...im pretty sure. the reason for the confusion was tone caparison with a 1972 Gibson EB-0 bass which also had one humbucker in the neck, but no "Deep Hard switch," as well as some limited audio (video) i have heard of a Starfire 2 bass with humbuckers. I won't really get into all that here to prevent further confusion...but i will ask one more question to the group before starting a new thread on the humbucker.

was going to wait until i got the Guild Book before any further inquiries but i think the public discussion is healthy regardless.

so with that, here is one more question for the group.

Do any of the Guild Starfire basses with Humbucker have the "Deep Hard" switch?

 

[fronobulax]

Do any of the Guild Starfire basses with Humbucker have the "Deep Hard" switch?

Yes. See pic of a '72 in Hans' book for example. The solid body M-85 also has humbuckers and the switch.