Veracity of the Guild Newark pickup reissues

[Quantum Strummer]

In my experience the old NYC and Hoboken are a special tone that can't get duplicated today. The pedigree of the wood, in many ways "inferior" to the better cuts available today are light, thin and aged. The vintage stain and clear coat does not dominate the tone as with the newer guitars. They early Guilds appear more fragile than the later instruments. They are special in the era and workmanship they were made.

This is true of many old Gibsons too, if by "inferior" you mean less fancy in terms of figuring, color or other visual characteristics. (As a Michigan guy I have a special fondness for the old Kalamazoo company. The current company…not so much.) I own a 1940 L-50 that pretty much plays me. It says, via tone & feel, "hit the strings like this" or "play this chord, not that one" and I obey. My F-20 is the only other acoustic guitar I own that can hang with it. As the Guild is a flattop it has a different sound & vibe, but like the Gibson it loves being a guitar. There's just something about that old wood, long dried & well seasoned with finishes that are barely still there.

-Dave-

 

[matsickma]

Hi Walter and QS,

My reference to inferior wood was tongue-in-cheek...If you look at the patterns of the maple and 'hog guitars today they are beautiful. You would need to have purchased a SF6 in the 60's to get an equivalent finish of wood. On a typical vintage Guild CE100 or T100 the maple was very plane with little to no grain pattern. These guitars were the less expensive models of the era yet today they exhibit great woodiness tone.

I look at the NS Guilds as todays version of a time when American touch labor was inexpensive. That isn't the case anymore but given Asian wages along with modern manufacturing machining, routing, painting and polishing robots and the accurate fret measuring and leveling gear the MIK guitars are as affordable now as the Guilds were back when they were made. An inflation calculator shows that $1 in 1960 is equal to $8 in 2015; $1 in 1967 is $7.1 in 2015. I bought my first Guild S-50 in 1967 for $170 (if my memory is correct). My decision was between a new S-50 with Hagstrum trem and a used T-100D with a pair of mickey mouse pups. I went with the solidbody. At todays prices that would cost $1200 which is close to the price for the MIK NS Guilds. American touch labor inflated much higher than the normal inflation rate as new "hand made" SF, T-400 or Aristocrat costs many $ thousands.

The early Guilds and others in that era were pretty special. Even a basic T100 or M65 looks and sounds special today. Were lucky vintage Guilds are still affordable. We get to experience the whole range of Guilds through all ages.



M

 

[guildman63]

And regarding neck dimensions, perhaps some Hoboken Guilds had thinner necks than their Westerly counterparts, but with Guild the only certainty is that nothing is consistent. My 61 X-175 didn't feel much different than my current AP guitars that are 1.7 at the nut. And my 56 CE-100 had the chunkiest neck I have ever found on a Guild. Ironically, it was extremely comfortable and easy to play, and despite my average sized hands it felt perfect. I have no idea what the nut width was, but it had a full neck for sure...it felt deeper than any other neck I have ever played and I loved it.

 

[Default]

CNC machines get paid the same over here as they do in China, Mike. Guild in the old days employed Portuguese immigrants to keep the cost down and paid poor wages. When I was talking to Mike in the repair shop, he mentione that pilferage was common, because the pay was so low. He had a Thunderbird amp with four 10's as his checkout amp and he walked in one day and it was gone. At New Hartford, the aim of the brand was to keep production low and move the brand upscale. That factory could have been pumping out D-25's, but the production was intentionally throttled down.

Building a guitar was more like multitasking than sitting with a drawshave making braces. There are so few people building guitars at the factory that transportation costs are becoming the factor, not the wages. Why did the Guild electrics cost so much? Because they could sell for that price.

 

[matsickma]

I have always been amazed that anything made in California could be affordable. Yet wage pressure seems not to be an issues given the Latin American migration into the state. Just as the Portuguese immigrants affected the competitiveness of Guild guitar prices in the early years and eastern European migration into coal mines and steel mills during the industrial revolution someone provides a wage advantage to the manufacturer. The MIK Guilds likely share many of the benefits of the lower wages even if only incrementally so. Or maybe it is the EPA regulations that impact where a factory is built. Martin Guitar seems to be able to manage low end and upper end production in Nazareth, PA.

Does anyone have an idea just how many MIK NS guitars have been made or sold to date? I have 6 at the moment. X175, CE100D, A150, S100, M75 Gold & M75 Black.

 

[Walter Broes]

Steve...wait....a Thunderbird amp with four tens? And reverb and tremolo too? I had no idea such a beast even existed!! Thanks for giving me Guild amp GAS!!!!

 

[SFIV1967]

Martin Guitar seems to be able to manage low end and upper end production in Nazareth, PA.

Those days are long gone! The Martin factory in Mexico "employs over 450 people today, and the workforce has grown by 50% since 2010. Located about 375 miles south of Nogales, Arizona, the factory is among the larger employers in Navojoa, a city with a population of approximately 140,000 people".

See: https://www.martinguitar.com/news/p...d-grow-as-it-celebrates-25th-anniversary.html

Also two videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8rjS5qZv28 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFfyHPKupo

Ralf

 

[SemiHollowCarrot]

It's the sum of everything I guess. One of my buddies has a Westerly X160 Rockabilly, late 90's, and yes, that too feels stiff and sounds brittle and doesn't have the sweet midrange and "woody" sound of my old guitars. But then I've played the guitar Chris Fleming built for Dave Gonzalez (at the Fender Custom Shop) some, unplugged backstage, and that one kind of made me go "whoa!!".

And the reissue ES330's Gibson has been doing in the custom shop in the last couple of years are pretty dang sweet guitars, and I haven't heard a single negative thing about them except that they're expensive. And that's probably the key right there : I think if you want to go through the trouble to "build them like they used to", as in "almost exactly like they used to", it's expensive. The market for hollowbodies is small anyway, and if you build them right, in the USA, your profit margin is probably small-ish. And Guilds are a tiny fragment of a small market, and that's probably the reason we're seeing Korean reissues, and no US made ones.

By all accounts, the last USA Guild factory was losing money rather than making any.

Also, I'm fairly sure age has something to do with it, even on laminated instruments. But that's almost impossible to "prove", and a big can of worms.

Which reissue 330?

There's the 59 330 and the 330L reissue. The only problem with the 330L reissue is that the p90s are wound really hot.

 

[Walter Broes]

I was talking about the 59 Reissue ES330.

 

[JohnW63]

Yet wage pressure seems not to be an issues given the Latin American migration into the state.

Weeeelllll. Because so many politicians here, think that a minimum wage job should NOW pay enough to raise a family and buy a house, there are movements afoot to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for now and $20 an hour in a handful of years later. If you figure what min wage was, in the mid 70s and extrapolate that to now, it should be about 10 bucks an hour. Of course, we all knew a min wage job was an entry level, no skill, pay for your record purchases and gas for your car, sort or job. Now...there are so many people who have few skills and think this job is better than they had ... in what ever country they came from, we need to make sure they can have "the dream" in a fast food job.

Of course this won't change how the people making more will feel about their job pay scale, will it ? If you have some skills and education and have doubled your min wage pay, only to see the unskilled pass you by, what will you expect of your employer ? How about all the union jobs that suddenly are much closer to the minimum wage or even get passed by it ? Will their reps sit on their hands ? I think not. In the end, I expect ALL jobs will move up with about the same amount as the min wage moves. Can you say inflation ?


So, if you think there will be a low cost labor force in California, your would be soon wrong.

 

[Quantum Strummer]

IMO a bit of inflation would actually be good for the world economy about now, provided it came as a corollary to economic growth. Take a look at Europe, for example…they're on the cusp of deflation right now, if not already there. With little to no growth to go along with it. They've austerity-ized themselves into the mud. Growth in the US is nothing to get excited about either.

The fact that good-paying jobs are tied to increasingly higher levels of required skills & education is a double-edged sword. If you've got the skills & education you're likely in very good shape. If not…well, you might be in for a hard(er) time. Not to mention that automation is taking away less skilled jobs at an accelerating pace. This is a far larger issue than whether the minimum wage is higher, lower or the same. That's mostly political gamesmanship.

Anyway, doesn't this really belong in a different thread?

-Dave-

 

[matsickma]

I often thought of taking a Super Star and converting it from a 1-15 into a 4-10 model. I did convert a Thunderstar bass cab into a 4-10 guitar cab. Currently a open back cab but I need to mess with rear baffel a bit. Converting a Thunderbird into 4-10 would be interesting. I'll run a 2nd version TBird amp thru a 4-10 cab to see how it sounds. I'm not to crazy about the Jensen guitar MOD 10's I have in the cab but it's a start.

M

 

[Default]

Guild was on the verge of becoming an "amp company", according to Mark Dronge. They were playing around with a lot of different designs until Leon Tell killed the the amp factory in Elizabeth.

 

[fronobulax]

Given comments about labor costs and minimum wage I am going to make the No Politics warning and hope that suffices.

 

[Walter Broes]

I was going to say the same thing Frono, let's not even discuss stuff that smells of politics, we don't do that here.

 

[SemiHollowCarrot]

Let's talk about how I'm gonna get me one of those Epiphone/Guild 50s crossbreeds.

 

[Walter Broes]

Are you going to look for an old one?

 

[SemiHollowCarrot]

Point me in the right direction!

 

[SFIV1967]

Let's talk about how I'm gonna get me one of those Epiphone/Guild 50s crossbreeds.

I have no idea what you mean with Epiphone (?) /Guild 50s "crossbreed" (?) but if you look for a 50ies Guild there are many models in the 50ies... One example here (with upside down mounted TRC): https://reverb.com/item/512453-guild-x-350-1953-sunburst
Ralf

 

[Just_Guild]

Not intending to cross post or anything, but I often see problems like detailed in a TGP thread that the new Guild reissue pickups are definitely not the same as the vintage ones.

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/new-guild-starfire-iv-guitars-opinions.1601622/

Problem?

I've played vintage Guilds with the new Guilds side by side and they sound pretty damn close to me. Not only that, but I've seen the innards between the two and the construction looks the same as well.

Figured I'd poll some experts and see what you guys think.

If anyone would like to try my all original 1972 Starfire IV, please contact me. Reasonable rates.