Ngd: S-275

GAD

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What a fun guitar! It's a bit in-between everything else.

It's like a Les Paul with the 'hog back and maple top
It's like a Strat because it's a flat-top
It's like a Les Paul because it's short scale
It's like a Strat in that it has only three knobs (vol/vol/tone)
It's like a Les Paul because it has a set neck
It's like a Guild because it's got an ebony board, XR-7s, and gold hardware worn to the bone like a Guild. :rolleyes-new:

And it's a joy because it's got a 1 11/16" neck! Edit - no it doesn't. :confused:

It's surprisingly light, thin, and plays like a dream.

Question: did these come stock with brass nuts? Seller seemed to think so and I've seen references to brass nuts online as well. Seems fitting for the time but even so kind of odd on a production guitar.

Gotta take pics. So much to do and I shouldn't be fondling guitars...

Update: Pic

1982-Guild-S275-TopFull.jpg
 
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matsickma

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Yes. So did the 80's version M80. Had two of each at one time or another and all four had brass nuts.

M
 

GAD

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My 1981 doesn't have a brass nut which is why I ask, but who knows it its original. Looks like a gap in there.

5D3_8131_1600.jpg


Thanks for the insight!
 

walrus

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That's an enticing short description, GAD! Congrats!

walrus
 

mavuser

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Nice one, i like those! congrats GAD. theres one or 2 on CL that keep surfacing, I may look into checking out sometime.
 

AcornHouse

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Mine had a brass nut that had its slots too deep, so I changed to a bone one.
 

GAD

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Honestly, I kind of which this thing had a Floyd Rose on it! Of course Guild would have made it a Kahler, so perhaps it's better off this way.
 

matsickma

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Beleive it or not...many years ago I saw a blond S275 for sale from someone in Japan with a stock Hagstrom vibrato in it. It also had all chrome hardware. It looked stock so I assumed it was a custom order.
 

GAD

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No, no room. It's a fairly slender slab.]

'Slender' maybe, but mine is a hog! Heaviest guitar I've ever owned, but sustain for days....

My 1982 S275 is just over 7 pounds, so it's actually one of the lighter guitars I own. My 1981 M80, by comparison, is thinner but weighs a whopping 9.5 pounds. Every time I pick it up I wonder if it's made out of ironwood.

It just goes to show how each guitar is different. I was surprised at how light the S275 was, especially since I've kind of grown to expect heavy guitars when it comes to Guild solid bodies.
 

Quantum Strummer

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Mine had a brass nut that had its slots too deep, so I changed to a bone one.

I have some Danelectro made guitars (Silvertone & Coral branded) with tall aluminum nuts. The slots are pretty deep, but I've found I can make 'em behave by smoothing 'em out and also widening 'em a bit above the tops of the strings. So the slots are flared rather than straight up & down.

-Dave-
 

GAD

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Hey, I like that one! I'd be tempted to mod it up with a set of HB-sized Duncan staple p'ups or somesuch. :)

-Dave-

I've got a drawer full of HB1s, SD1s, not to mention a host of othere, so I may just do that when I'm done writing it up.
 

GAD

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I don't know what I was smoking when I wrote that it had a 1 11/16" neck. It does not. It's a solid 1 5/8" at the nut.
 

DThomasC

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But it doesn't feel that narrow, does it? My S-25 has a 1 5/8" nut, but I have no trouble with it. I had a late 60's ES-330 with a 1 5/8" nut and for some reason there just wasn't enough room anywhere for all of my fingers, but I can play the Guild without thinking about it.
 

GAD

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But it doesn't feel that narrow, does it? My S-25 has a 1 5/8" nut, but I have no trouble with it. I had a late 60's ES-330 with a 1 5/8" nut and for some reason there just wasn't enough room anywhere for all of my fingers, but I can play the Guild without thinking about it.

I ran into this years ago when comparing '70s Starfires with my '79 S300. The Starfire's neck was impossibly tiny while the S300's neck seemed fine. What's weird is that they were both 1 5/8" at the nut. I started measuring and discovered that the S300's neck was a bit over 1mm deeper but that made all the difference in the world.

This image shows a Warmoth neck profile difference between "standard thin" and "wizard". The difference is about the same as those two guitars I mentioned:

NeckDifference2mm.png


This kind of blows my mind every time I think about it. If I looked at a spec sheet and saw a difference this small I'd probably call it inconsequential but the difference of feel in my hand is huge! I would sell the guitar with the smaller neck (pencil neck!) because it was unplayable while the thicker neck would feel much better.

We've got lots of nerve endings in those fingertips. When you spend 10,000 hours playing a guitar with a certain neck shape even a tiniest of differences matter. I think with hand-carved necks it's easy to have a 1mm variation between samples, though I have no idea how a luthier checks the profile of a neck that's being hand-sanded.
 

adorshki

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I ran into this years ago when comparing '70s Starfires with my '79 S300. The Starfire's neck was impossibly tiny while the S300's neck seemed fine. What's weird is that they were both 1 5/8" at the nut. I started measuring and discovered that the S300's neck was a bit over 1mm deeper but that made all the difference in the world.

This kind of blows my mind every time I think about it. If I looked at a spec sheet and saw a difference this small I'd probably call it inconsequential but the difference of feel in my hand is huge! I would sell the guitar with the smaller neck (pencil neck!) because it was unplayable while the thicker neck would feel much better.


Ran into this with my Corona D40, after getting used to my D25 and F65ce's "Modern Flat Oval" necks.
It always felt "stiffer" up and down the fretboard, I figured it had what I called the "Fender set-up", being from Corona, and it felt like the '80's Fender MIK flattop I'd had before.
Checked the action height: spot on Guild's specs where I like it, nut gap at first fret was fine, so it was a head-scratcher until one night while I was trying to "bond" with it, I noticed the neck had this very slight "thickening" at about the 5th fret, you wouldn't notice it normally, but it was an inconsistency in the tapering towards the heel, a slight "bump".
So I started looking at it more closely and realized it actually had a "D" profile (actually what Fender calls an "oval C", and almost what they call a full blown "U" higher up the neck.
Don't know if Fender was hand-shaping 'em in Corona like they did in Westerly but the "chunky" profile seems to be the most commonly mentioned from there, even in electrics.
We've got lots of nerve endings in those fingertips. When you spend 10,000 hours playing a guitar with a certain neck shape even a tiniest of differences matter.
After a couple of years I got used to it, after dedicating a lot of time to it in while the D25 was getting a refret, and afterwards too.
Now with 10-years older hands it's actually more comfortable for some things like scales higher up the neck, above the 7th fret, in fact....
The whole geometry of the hand varies from person to person but I think it's also related to what the relationship is between your thumb's ability to apply leverage at the back of the neck and what that forces your fingers to do on the fretboard.
So the thickness affects the thumb leverage.
I think with hand-carved necks it's easy to have a 1mm variation between samples, though I have no idea how a luthier checks the profile of a neck that's being hand-sanded.

CarvedNeck3.jpg

I also first saw this in Fender's "Frontline"catalog from '01:
guitar-neck-contours.jpg

Note the importance they place of fretboard radius as well, that's another part of the equation.
And while looking up those photos even found there's demand for asymmetric profiles, yeesh!,who'da thunk?:
Asymmetric-neck-shapes-3.png
 
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