Incoming: 1963 Tenor Special

nmiller

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Normally I wait until an instrument's in my hands to show it off, but I'm curious to know if you folks have seen another one like this before. Lately I've become a big fan of the tenor guitar, and I've long been a fan of Guild electrics, so when the stars aligned and I saw this one come up for sale, I pounced. It was priced like you'd expect from a high-end vintage dealer, but it's exceptionally clean and I'm not likely to see another, so... what the heck, I'll get my Tiny Grimes on. I expect to get it by the end of next week.

The label simply says "Tenor Special", and it's sort of a mash-up of a CE-100D and a T-100D: block markers and back binding on a thinline body with single-coil pickups. I've seen a few Guild electric tenors before, but never with 4-pole variants of this pickup type. How are these pickups constructed? Are they structurally similar to P-90s? The dealer says that the neck has a 24.75" scale, which is unusually long for a tenor; I forgot to verify this, but the neck looks like it's that long from these pics.

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hansmoust

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Normally I wait until an instrument's in my hands to show it off, but I'm curious to know if you folks have seen another one like this before.

Tenor guitars were already listed as an option during the second half of the '50s, but by that time the popularity of the tenor guitar was already waning and consequently very few Guild tenors were produced. Since there were long intervals in between the completion of these instruments you will very rarely find similar looking ones. The ones that you see will have the pickups from the period they were ordered in and usually these were regular guitar pickups with the outside poles covered, a practice that you will also see on tenor guitars made by Gibson and Gretsch. This guitar was completed towards the end of 1963 and it has the same pickups you will find on other Guild electrics from that specific period with a white cover, but only four polepieces.

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Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
 
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matsickma

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That is the coolest tenor I've ever seen! Not sure how to play such a beauty buy would be fun learning!
M
 

kakerlak

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Meh, needs a Guildsby. You can take two of the pegs out of it to match the pickups.
 

txbumper57

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Saw that on Reverb yesterday and was hoping someone here got it! Congrats NMiller! She is a beauty for sure! I like the history in the ad that they were tying into.

TX
 

nmiller

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Tenor guitars were already listed as an option during the second half of the '50s

Hans - I've looked through a bunch of late '50s and '60s catalogs and price lists, and haven't found any official references to tenor guitars. Are you saying they were offered as a regular product? I assumed they were all custom orders.
 

hansmoust

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I've looked through a bunch of late '50s and '60s catalogs and price lists, and haven't found any official references to tenor guitars. Are you saying they were offered as a regular product? I assumed they were all custom orders.

Tenor guitars were offered as a 'regular' model in the 1957 and 1958 catalog,

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... but they were available as an option on various models much earlier than that. Being an option they usually had the 'Special' designation on the label. You had to order the option, but basically it was just a variation on an existing model.
The oldest one I've seen so far was an X-100 Tenor that dated to approximately 1954, but most of the ones from the '50s that I've seen were Aristocrat M-75s, followed by X-150s and CE-100s.

During the '60 you will start to see T-100s with the tenor option, but not only archtop/electrics; various flat top guitars were made as tenor models as well.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
 
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matsickma

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Years ago when Westerly was closed a guy was selling a lot of old Guild parts. A chrome Harp stop of the smaller size as used on M65 Freshman was advertised as a part fir a 4 string bass. I bought one for my spare parts bin thinking some day to use it on a bass. When it arrived I was surprised to see the cutouts for the four strings were pretty small and couldn't imagine what type if bass strings would fit it. Years later I realized I had purchased a part for a Guild tenor guitar!
M
 

nmiller

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Huh; I have a copy of that same catalog but somehow missed the tenor listings.

I'm still curious as to how these pickups are constructed (4- or 6-pole). Do they have bar magnets underneath the coil like a P-90?
 

hansmoust

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Huh; I have a copy of that same catalog but somehow missed the tenor listings.

You may have looked to another one; there are three slightly different versions of that catalog.

I'm still curious as to how these pickups are constructed (4- or 6-pole). Do they have bar magnets underneath the coil like a P-90?

They're similar to a P-90, with a bar magnet on each side of the polepieces.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
www.guitarsgalore.nl
 

nmiller

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To my surprise, the guitar arrived this morning; I didn't realize it had even been shipped. Fortunately, that was the only surprise; it's exactly as described & shown, with just very minor play wear around the edges. The headstock veneer shrinkage is less than average for a '60s Guild, and the tailpiece holds four strings rather than six. It's been a while since I played these pickups, but they're more or less as I remember: low to medium output with full bass and a slightly soft treble. In the middle position, they're out of phase. The scale is indeed 24.75", which requires a little more stretching than my other tenors but is not really difficult to play.

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gilded

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How are you gonna tune it? Chicago or regular?

I used to watch Tiny Grimes play tenor in NYC in the early '70s. He was a DGBE man if I remember correctly.
 

shihan

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Congratulations on a beautiful guitar. I hope it gives you much joy!
Tiny Grimes did not need more than 4 strings; he could play circles around most guys. I love his playing.
 
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