Got my NS X175!!

Walter Broes

Enlightened Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
1,957
Location
Antwerp, Belgium
I had a Newark Street X175 on order for a while, and it finally arrived last week. I ordered the sunburst model with the wood bridge and the harp tail - because I've seen a couple of the "amber" natural finished models and wasn't too crazy about the finish.
I did put a metal (stainless steel) Tru Arc bar bridge and a Bigsby on it though. The Bigsby is a NOS USA Guild one I got off the bay, it came in gold, but I polished the goldoff with some car polish.
Here it is minutes after the Bigsby install :

NewarkST_zps42681837.jpg




Before I start nitpicking and "taking it apart" I'll say this first. I'm very, very impressed. It's an awful lot of guitar for the money, and it's almost scary to see the trouble they went to to copy a late 50's Guild.

Things that are really great about it :
----------------------------------------------------------

-The body silhouette, arch, weight, shape and size feel exactly like '60 X175 I used to have. Somebody really did their homework.

-Same goes for the neck - it's not the usual Korean scarfed on headstock and heel, it's constructed like a 50's Guild neck, two pieces of mahogany with a strip of maple in the middle. Shape is a LOT like my old X175's, and it has the same fingerboard radius too. Frets are very well finished medium jumbos, matter of taste, but I do a lot of bending, so I'm very happy with the bigger frets.

-The headstock is a new design, really...it's a 50's style headstock with a 60's style "peak", and I think it looks great. Tuners are open back Grover Statites with round buttons, and they work great. (and I think they look great too). I already had a set of those with the kidney bean buttons replacing the vintage ones on my Starfire, and they're great tuners.

-It has a very well cut bone nut

-It's poly finished, but it doesn't feel like it's dipped in plastic. It's a little shinier than I'd like, but it's a very nicely done sunburst, and it looks good.

-It comes with a very nice case

-It came with a little more neck relief than I like, but there's a nice truss rod key in the case, and one tweak got the neck to near straight, how I like it. And even adjusted like that, the fret job on it proved to be nicely done : no buzzing or rattling, no loose or high frets.

-It sounds GREAT! I doesn't sound exactly like an old one, but for a brand new, stock-out of the box Korean built guitar with a sub $1000 street price, it gets awful close. More about that later.

Things that are different than what I'm used to :
--------------------------------------------------------------

-the control layout and wiring is "Gibsonized". On a Hoboken Guild, which this is kind of a copy of, both volume controls are on top, and the corresponding tone controls are underneath on the bottom row. Not on the NSX175 : the control layout is the same as on a Les Paul. No big deal at all, just confusing if you're not used to it. I have grabbed the wrong knob on it already, rehearsing with it.

The volume pots are not wired "decoupled" as on a Hoboken Guild - if you have both pickups on and you turn one down competely, the guitar goes silent. Not so on a Hoboken one - again, no big deal, just a matter of taste.

-The lead pickup sits closer to the neck. You can even tell by looking at pictures of it, and comparing. It's probably a concious decision, because the lead pickup on a Hoboken Guild sits pretty close to the bridge and can get a little thin and spikey. On this NS Guild, the treble pickup sits a good deal further away from the bridge, giving the bass strings more low end, and taking some ice-pick off the trebles.
It's cool, but I would have put it somewhere between where it sits now, and where it sits on an old one. The lead pickup by itself is definitely more usable and less spikey, but the middle pickup position gets a little mellow for my taste.

-The pickups, while inside and outside being impressively done Franz pickup clones, are hotter than what I'm used to. I've rehearsed with the guitar twice, and I've gone back and forth between it, a Hoboken X175, and a Hoboken CE100, without changing the settings on the amp, and the new one is louder, a little less twangy and airy, and the pickups, while still getting some of that Franz twang, treble, and growl, have a little more of an upper midrange Gibson P90 snarl to them than the old ones I'm used to.

And it's impossible to say if it's just the pickups of course, because they're not on the same guitar, but it does translate into a slightly less dynamic and subtle plugged in playing experience. I've recorded some of the rehearsal because we were working on a tune, and recorded, it sounds better, and more like a Guild than I thought - because in my hands while playing, it felt a little more "blunt" and less subtle than my old guitars.

They're not bad pickups, and they're not P90's - they're well within the old Franz pickup ballpark, just a little fatter and and louder. Which for a lot of people is probably more usable than the old pickups, because plugged into the wrong amp, they càn get a little too twangy and spikey.
I'm not sure yet, I might have them rewound, as I have a good friend who winds pickups and does a great job. But then, I'm not sure I will, because I have two old X175's, and I kind of like the sound this one puts out. Also, this is going to be my rehearsal/flying gig/shady bar guitar, and the slightly hotter pickups might be a good match for the hired backline I have to deal with on fly-in gigs sometimes.
I'm really not sure yet.


All in all, it's a very nice, if not amazingly nice guitar for the price. I would still think it's a great guitar if it cost a good deal more. It'll do old style Jazz, blues, swing, Rockabilly, twangy Honky Tonk, or any non-power chord style you throw at it, and do it well. It looks almost exactly like a Hoboken X175, and feel-wise, it gets closer than I thought it would. I've rehearsed with it twice so far, and while I was picking nits and saying what I maybe didn't like about it, the two other guys in the band were saying "dude....that thing sounds KILLER, and it looks almost exactly like your old ones, but new!"

Unplugged, it's not as warm and dry sounding as my 50 year old X175's. But plugged in, I doubt anyone in the audience could really tell the difference. Great guitar, and highly recommended!
 

cc_mac

Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
417
Reaction score
0
Location
North Carolina
Fantastic review. Guildsby and Tru Arc look great! How long did it take to pilish off the gold finish?
 

Walter Broes

Enlightened Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
1,957
Location
Antwerp, Belgium
The gold comes right off with some good chrome polish or car polish, getting it out of the little nooks and crannies just takes a little time...:)

And I still have a gold spring in there, haha.

Funny thing is you end up with an very shiny Bigsby : regular ones aren't plated, they're polished aluminum. But the gold ones are nickel plated underneath the gold (or the gold wouldn't "take" as I understand it), so it's much shinier than a regular Bigsby. Looks cool, and kind of goes with the shiny new finish on the guitar too.
 

FNG

Enlightened Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2006
Messages
5,961
Reaction score
1,516
Location
Planet Earth
Guild Total
596
Great review from someone who knows Guilds and can play the heck out of them!
 

twocorgis

Venerated Member
Gold Supporting
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
13,922
Reaction score
6,519
Location
Lawn Guyland
Guild Total
18
Looks like a beauty Walter, and it sounds like Guild really did their homework with this model in particular. Play it in good health!
 

matsickma

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2005
Messages
4,280
Reaction score
1,028
Location
Coopersburg, PA
Very nice!

I have been very pleased with the 3 (soon to be 4) NS guitars that I acquired to date. Only observation I found curious was your comment that the new Franz pups were louder than the vintage Franz pups. I was thinking the opposite from a little comparison I did last night. However I'll expand my evaluation in the coning weeks and also measure the DC resistance of each pup.

M
 

SFIV1967

Venerated Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
18,442
Reaction score
8,956
Location
Bavaria / Germany
Guild Total
8
Congratulations Walter, and this was an outstanding review!
I would think if one really does like the surface a tiny bit less shiny one could probably take all the hardware off and use super fine 3000 grid sandpaper to just get it to a stage before the final polish would have happened in the factory.
Ralf
 

Walter Broes

Enlightened Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
1,957
Location
Antwerp, Belgium
Very nice!

I have been very pleased with the 3 (soon to be 4) NS guitars that I acquired to date. Only observation I found curious was your comment that the new Franz pups were louder than the vintage Franz pups. I was thinking the opposite from a little comparison I did last night. However I'll expand my evaluation in the coning weeks and also measure the DC resistance of each pup.

M
All my Franzes are late 50's/early 60's, and they measure out a 5K and 6K. The pickups in the NS guitar measure out at 7K. But that didn't spark my comments about the new ones being louder - the guitar obviously was louder and more agressive than my old ones at rehearsal.
 

gilded

Senior Member
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
3,479
Reaction score
197
Location
texas
Walter, it all sounds good. Now that the guitar has Walter Acceptance, I officially have Walter Envy! Mr. Broes, you are my Bro'!


OK, all BS aside, I have Tru Arc/fingerboard radius match-up questions:

Do you know what the radius of the Tru Arc you are using is? 8"? 9"? 12"?

How about the fingerboard radius?

How does it match up with the radius of the fingerboard??

Another question:

You were talking about the NS guitar sounding slightly different than the old ones through the amps, correct?

When you compare your old guitars to the new one, do all of the guitars have Tru Arc bridges? [I ask because I know that you've used tune-a-matics with carefully massaged saddle slots extensively in the past]

If all of your guitars have the same Tru Arc bridges nowadays, are they all made of the same type of metal, and not aluminum vs. copper vs. unobtanium, etc.?

Thanks for your time, Harry
 

Walter Broes

Enlightened Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
1,957
Location
Antwerp, Belgium
Do you know what the radius of the Tru Arc you are using is? 8"? 9"? 12"?

How about the fingerboard radius?

How does it match up with the radius of the fingerboard??

Another question:

You were talking about the NS guitar sounding slightly different than the old ones through the amps, correct?

When you compare your old guitars to the new one, do all of the guitars have Tru Arc bridges? [I ask because I know that you've used tune-a-matics with carefully massaged saddle slots extensively in the past]

If all of your guitars have the same Tru Arc bridges nowadays, are they all made of the same type of metal, and not aluminum vs. copper vs. unobtanium, etc.?
I knew beforehand the Guild came with a 9.5" fingerboard radius, so that's the Tru-Arc I'd ordered. Yes, fingerboard and bridge ideally have the same radius.

One of the old guitars I compared it with has a stainless steel Tru-Arc as well, the other one a Tune-a-Matic.

The NS guitar is a little louder,with some obvious traits of pickups that are wound hotter : more output, more upper midrange, more bass.
 

gilded

Senior Member
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
3,479
Reaction score
197
Location
texas
Got it. What metal is the NS X175 Tru Arc bridge made out of? Stainless? Aluminum?

EDIT: Sorry, Walter, I didn't see that you'd put a Stainless Tru Arc on the new X175, too. Mea Culpa.

Okay, new direction in a similar question. How do your old X175 differ in sound or playability vis a vis the Tru Arc/Tune-a-matic comparison?

HH
 
Last edited:

jcwu

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2008
Messages
2,958
Reaction score
37
Location
San Jose, CA
Thanks, Walter, for your detailed review!!

The Bigsby is a NOS USA Guild one I got off the bay, it came in gold, but I polished the goldoff with some car polish.
Had I known the gold ones could be polished to chrome... I spent so long hunting for a non-gold Guildsby!!

Unplugged, it's not as warm and dry sounding as my 50 year old X175's.
This is one thing that I've come to discover as of late - just how unique a properly aged instrument can sound. It's so light and responsive and warm, totally blew my mind.

I think the Newark Street line has a bright future. :)
 

Walter Broes

Enlightened Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2005
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
1,957
Location
Antwerp, Belgium
Okay, new direction in a similar question. How do your old X175 differ in sound or playability vis a vis the Tru Arc/Tune-a-matic comparison?
If a tune-a-matic is set up well (matches your fretboard arch), the playability is the same as the Tru-Arc. The Tru-Arc sounds a little punchier and more even, and has a hair more sustain.

Unless you're trying really bad hardware, the key thing is setup. A properly cut nut, same with the bridge, and well dressed frets on a straight neck, and you're golden, the type of hardware is secondary and not as big a deal.
 
Last edited:

Bikerdoc

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Messages
2,504
Reaction score
37
Location
Wapakoneta, Ohio
Oh man...I've been debating and now you come up with the answer. Great looking guitar and the price sure seems reasonable. It's definitely one of the models I'll be considering. Beautiful instrument.

Peace
 

cc_mac

Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
417
Reaction score
0
Location
North Carolina
The gold comes right off with some good chrome polish or car polish, getting it out of the little nooks and crannies just takes a little time...:)

And I still have a gold spring in there, haha.

Funny thing is you end up with an very shiny Bigsby : regular ones aren't plated, they're polished aluminum. But the gold ones are nickel plated underneath the gold (or the gold wouldn't "take" as I understand it), so it's much shinier than a regular Bigsby. Looks cool, and kind of goes with the shiny new finish on the guitar too.

Thanks for sharing your process on "de-golding." That may come in to play for me at some point.

You are right about the nickel finish Bigsby. The whole look of the guitar is very striking and understated at the same time. Although I've still not had a chance to see one in person the finish in all the pictures I've seen (yours included) is captivating. Your description of the overall fit and finish as well as the sound makes it even ore attractive. I look forward to seeing/hearing some video of it in action.
 

SFIV1967

Venerated Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
18,442
Reaction score
8,956
Location
Bavaria / Germany
Guild Total
8
Hi Walter: I got a question. Back at NAMM 2013 Mike Lewis told me that each X-175 will be delivered with two wooden bridges, one uncompensated for would G string, a second one compensated for plain G string. So a player can change the bridge and strings as he likes.
The question is if your guitar also came with the two? I am just curious, as nobody had mentioned it yet.
Ralf
 
Top