Cordoba Guild folks, are you reading this?

JohnW63

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I guess there isn't REALLY a specific guitar for a given style. You play the style you like on what you can buy.
 

fronobulax

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I guess there isn't REALLY a specific guitar for a given style. You play the style you like on what you can buy.

That's very true but if you have choices, you make them. And buying a new guitar is all about increasing your choices :)
 

JohnW63

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if you have choices, you make them

It seems there are no hard rules, though. I've asked enough electric guitar questions in this forum alone, to realize that everyone has their own opinion, and those opinions are rather nebulous. It almost always comes down to " Play what YOU like. " , but finding any of the guitars mentioned, without becoming a buy and return or buy and sell machine, is difficult.
 

fronobulax

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It seems there are no hard rules, though. I've asked enough electric guitar questions in this forum alone, to realize that everyone has their own opinion, and those opinions are rather nebulous. It almost always comes down to " Play what YOU like. " , but finding any of the guitars mentioned, without becoming a buy and return or buy and sell machine, is difficult.

To continue the veer why is it reasonable to expect anything else? If you want to sound like someone else then the place to start is an instrument similar to what they play. If you have a sound in your head then you need to be able to describe it accurately enough for someone else to hear it in their head and make suggestions. If you want to work in a style with some ergonomic challenges then you can usually measure what you think you want. For example fingerpickers often prefer wider nuts. If you want to play in a culture that has certain expectations then you need to figure out what those are. Traditional bluegrass won't let anything but a stand up bass in the room. Traditional country often gets along just fine a Telecaster. There is a reason hollow bodied electrics are often called jazz boxes. So most "what?" questions are going to be answered from personal experience or preference and traditional stereotypes. (Sure you can play classical music on a D25 but why do so when the Guild Mark series was designed for that?)

As for the "try" that is a problem but there is really no general solution.

Just in case the question "If I could only have one guitar, which one would it be?" lies behind your thinking let me say that everyone I knew who has asked that question has ended up owning multiple guitars, whether successively or simultaneously and the answer seems to change as they grow or change musically.
 

adorshki

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Al,

Could I simplify what you wrote to say, the older ones were targeted to the Jazz crowd, and that by the time they moved to Westerly, they were changing the designs to accommodate the more modern music ?
Did they then have more guitars with humbuckers and less with single coils in the lineup ? ( Assuming the sound preference was moving toward more over driven tones for rock music )
Yes, you could simplify it to that, but I'm not enough of a "'leccie guy" to be familiar with how that might have affected the pickup offerings.
I think Default would have a lot more insight for example, since the other guys I could think of off the top of my head favor one school or the other.
Or possibly LA, who's got a pretty extensive electric collection. Or Grot, whose gallery is easy to see: guildsofgrot.com.
Oh, and probably Ralf (StarfireIV1967).
Added:
Just finished reading Frono's observations and that made me want to add that the more I read here, the more important I think pickups are so I get your question.
Example when I was kid I loved the continous sustain in Carlos Santana's tone, and John Cippolina in Quicksilver, and both of them played SG's, so I though that would be my dream guitar. At the time, I think pickup swapping was far less common than it is now, the more common trick was to rewind 'em, but that was basically the humbucker sound to me.
But for counterpoint, there was the Youngbloods' "Darkness Darkness" with the same kind of sustain on a completely different guitar, a 1953 M75 hollow-body (not sure what pickups came on that Guild) but it's pictured here:
http://www.vintageinstruments.com/museum/53m75sfulpage.html
Same guitar was used for "Let's Get Together" so I'd say you can get a hellacious amount of versatility out of that early formula. And it occurs to me he might have been using a fuzzbox on Darkness Darkness to get some extra sustain.
I'm also partial to the "edge of breakup" or distortion tone that I hear more frequently on hollow or semi hollow bodies, like George Thorogood's "Move it on Over" or Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold".
Or Kink's "You Really Got Me", and we know there was a Starfire in that band.
But again I don't what kind of pickups those guys use, or if they've got pedals. A simple fuzz box could be 90% of that tone.
Do you like the "Creedence sound", like "Proud Mary"? Starfire, and I'm sure it was stock. Plenty of links here or on Youtube to look at pickups.
I also love Wes Montgomery's tone, Gibson L5 was his guitar of choice, so maybe something in the hollowbody voice with so much "wood" is actually a good base to build "breakup" on even though jazzers love 'em, and don't overdrive 'em.
Kenny Burell's "Midnight Blue" shows a jazzer playing a hollow body and getting a little gritty besides.
So these days I'd probably recommemd a hollow or semi hollow for versatiilty in finding your own style/sound.
At the moment I just can't recall ever hearing anybody get a real true woody/hollow sound out of a solid body, but I know you can get get about 99% of a solid body's sound from a hollow, especially if you're not into those ear-piercing screeching treble overloads the hairbands were so enamored of... but even Jorma in the Airplane could get real close to that with a Rickenbacker or a Gibson ES....
 
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guildman63

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Ironically, great players can pick up various guitars, play them, and most people will have a hard time discerning one guitar from another. Jimmy Bruno has played various guitars over the years, but to me he always sounds the same. I've said before that tone and feel are very subjective. Any style can be played on almost any guitar. Find what sounds and feels right to you, and don't worry about what others think.
 

Westerly Wood

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Ironically, great players can pick up various guitars, play them, and most people will have a hard time discerning one guitar from another. Jimmy Bruno has played various guitars over the years, but to me he always sounds the same. I've said before that tone and feel are very subjective. Any style can be played on almost any guitar. Find what sounds and feels right to you, and don't worry about what others think.

totally agree. I have an old Yamaha FG-160 made in Taiwan that sounds great. If it didn't have such high action, I would play it a lot more. I have played several Martins, Gibsons, even a few Taylors that sound way better than my D25BR. Well, not way, but definitely better. My fave guitar of all time is the Gibson J45, and I recently nearly dropped 2K on one, but thought better about it. One day I hope to own one.

Though I appreciate the Guild tone, the even volume across all strings, I am Guild fan because of the story and even more so by my own growing up in RI story. And never knowing Guild was a stone's throw away. Tragic almost.
 

adorshki

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Sorry for the veer posts, then.

I'm hopin' that's a great deadpan joke, but if not, you take that back right now!
Veers give backstory and color to what otherwise would be typical ho-hum recitations of tech specs like we so much of what we see elsewhere.....
Your questions were not only sincere but entirely relevant if one wants to know why Cordoba should consider producing a guitar like the one in the first post, besides the fact that it's gorgeous...
 

adorshki

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I sort of took this as a hint , as it was in response to my last question:
Yep, Frono can be pretty dry sometimes.
Opaque, even.
Our veering philosophy might have been captured best, formed even, with the immortal Coastie99's famous battle cry:
"Don't fear the veer!"
:friendly_wink:
 

fronobulax

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I sort of took this as a hint , as it was in response to my last question:

Sorry. I was asking what you expected concerning your quest for information. I implicitly approved of the veer by participating in it. Fighting The Veer is a losing battle and I have learned not to fight it.
 

guildman63

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too bad they're laminated.

Laminated is not synonymous with lower quality. Many phenomenal jazz guitarists use laminated guitars on a regular basis out of personal preference and for practical reasons. Regarding cost, the new Memphis ES-175 costs more than I paid for my AP X-500. While I'm sure the Memphis is a very nice guitar I will choose the AP every day. Personal preference, of course. :joyous:
 

SFIV1967

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too bad they're laminated.
Don't understand your comment. Most of the outstanding original Guild electric models from 1953 and onwards (even the top models like the X-500) had laminated bodies and laminated spruce tops. It's funny when people sell their 50ies M-75 Aristocrat and claim they have solid spruce tops, no they were laminated! Guess what a Starfire is made of? Laminated wood.
The very best Guild acoustic guitars had laminated arched backs as well! (F-412, F-50, D-25,...). The arched back gives it that special and fuller sound. You should not compare this to a Taylor GS Mini construction, where their laminated back and sides wood actually gives less tone (as Taylor acknowledges).
Now if you really want a solid spruce top on a vintage Guild Jazz guitar you need to get like a Johnny Smith Award or Artist Award model, A-150, A-350, A-500/A-550, CA-100, X-700 or so.
Ralf
 
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Walter Broes

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too bad they're laminated.
They always were.

And wy is that "too bad"? Just on principle? Because supposedly "solid is better"? True for flattop acoustics, but for electric archtops, you'll find a laminated guitar is a lot more practical, easier to amplifiy, plain easier to *use*.

A lot of iconic Jazz/achtop guitars are laminated. The classic Gibson ES175 is probably the best-known, most widely used and copied "jazz guitar", and it is an always has been laminated. Same goes for Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel's Gibson ES350's, or both Gentlemen's signature Gibson archtops. Django Reinhardt's coveted Selmer/Macaferri guitars had laminated rosewood back and sides. I've never heard anyone remark "too bad they're not playing a solid wood guitar" when listening to records by these folks.
 

hansmoust

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SFIV1967 said:
Now if you really want a solid spruce top on a vintage Guild Jazz guitar you need to get like a Johnny Smith Award or Artist Award model, A-150, A-350, A-50, CA-100, CA-500, X-700 or so.
Ralf

Not the A-50! That one has a laminated top as well!

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
 
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