GAD's Guild Knowledge Base

GAD

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GAD's Guild Knowledge Base is now a thing!

http://www.gad.net/Blog/guild-catalogs-price-lists/ if you like to know the URL. It's also on gadsguilds.com, too. I'll likely add a link to my sig.

It will continue to be updated roughly whenever I feel like it, and as I scan the larger catalogs and such that are not yet there.

In the course of my document searching, I realized that I also had some cool amp manuals and schematics, so those are up there now, too.

The entire thing is searchable, but unfortunately you can't search within documents, so there's a bit of a limitation that if you search for "nightbird" that you won't find much even though there are catalogs that contain Nightbirds. Still, being able to look at impossible-to-find catalogs that have Nightbirds in them is better than we had before, so it's progress.

I'm going to add all of the reviews I have to the knowledge base, but that's sort of klunky due to software limitations. It will, however, let you match the reviews when searching which I think will be kind of a big deal.

Any feedback is welcome.
 

AcornHouse

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Great! Would you like submissions? I have a packet of schematics of the later 60s amps. What format?
 

GAD

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Great! Would you like submissions? I have a packet of schematics of the later 60s amps. What format?

Sure! Whatever format they're in is fine. If they're PDFs and they're sideways I generally convert them, but otherwise it's cool just to have the information available.
 

Bonneville88

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OUTSTANDING! Just getting delightfully lost in the 1980 acoustic guitar cat...
GAD, you are amazing! Thanks for putting this together!
 

dbirchett

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What about reviews of Guild Guitars from Guitar Player and the like? Or does that raise copyright issues that you don't want to deal with?
 

fronobulax

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The entire thing is searchable, but unfortunately you can't search within documents,

At least a decade ago I approximated that by running a PDF through an OCR scanner, cleaning up the results by comparison to a dictionary and word list and then using Lucene to manage the index and search. There was some fuzzy matching involved as well - I think on the user search data but it may have been when deciding whether a string from the OCR was kept because it matched or thrown out because it didn't.
 

mellowgerman

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Very cool! I think I have a few Guild pamphlets from the early 70's that I'd be happy to contribute when I find them

VEER ALERT: Interestingly the 1966 catalog says that the Starfire bass has an anti-hum pickup and comes with a padded professional gig bag... I know Guild were known for occasional quirky deviations from their formulas, but the one pictured has a single-coil bisonic and I am near 100% certain that they never had any humbucking bass pickups in before 1970. The only exceptions to the Bisonic I've seen from 1966 were other single coils (the mickey-mouse one and the variant with the square pole pieces). The mention of a gig-bag makes me wonder too. I seem to have a hazy memory of Guild-branded brown leather gig bag popping up on ebay some years ago, but I've never heard any stories of a new Guild Starfire coming with one instead of a hardshell case...
Wonder if there are other catalog discrepancies in regard to 6-string counterparts? Admittedly, I don't know enough Guild history outside of the bass realm to comment on that
 
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fronobulax

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Very cool! I think I have a few Guild pamphlets from the early 70's that I'd be happy to contribute when I find them

VEER ALERT: Interestingly the 1966 catalog says that the Starfire bass has an anti-hum pickup and comes with a padded professional gig bag... I know Guild were known for occasional quirky deviations from their formulas, but the one pictured has a single-coil bisonic and I am near 100% certain that they never had any humbucking bass pickups in before 1970. The only exceptions to the Bisonic I've seen from 1966 were other single coils (the mickey-mouse one and the variant with the square pole pieces). The mention of a gig-bag makes me wonder too. I seem to have a hazy memory of Guild-branded brown leather gig bag popping up on ebay some years ago, but I've never heard any stories of a new Guild Starfire coming with one instead of a hardshell case...
Wonder if there are other catalog discrepancies in regard to 6-string counterparts? Admittedly, I don't know enough Guild history outside of the bass realm to comment on that

I think I would start by questioning whether the catalog is really a '66. I know, for example, of a 1970 catalog that touts the Starfire humbuckers as "new" but is illustrated by a bass with two Bisonics. It's on my list to scan for GAD :)
 

GAD

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I think I would start by questioning whether the catalog is really a '66. I know, for example, of a 1970 catalog that touts the Starfire humbuckers as "new" but is illustrated by a bass with two Bisonics. It's on my list to scan for GAD :)

Yeah - dating some of the catalogs is tough and one more reason why Hans is our hero.
 

GAD

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At least a decade ago I approximated that by running a PDF through an OCR scanner, cleaning up the results by comparison to a dictionary and word list and then using Lucene to manage the index and search. There was some fuzzy matching involved as well - I think on the user search data but it may have been when deciding whether a string from the OCR was kept because it matched or thrown out because it didn't.

That seems like real work. :tongue-new:
 

The Guilds of Grot

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Would you like me to scan all these for you?

Price%20List%20033-X_zpsadaqp3y6.jpg


Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, not!

(But seriously, if you'd like to borrow my literature binder and scan the whole thing, you're welcome to it!)
 

GAD

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Damn, Grot!

One of these days I'll take you up on your kind offer. Maybe if the snow ever goes away.
 

matsickma

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I wonder if the reference to a bass antihum pickup was referring to the use of the small Hagstrom pickup occasionally seen paired up with the larger Bisonic Hagstrom pickup. I had assumed the smaller bridge bridge pickup was a single coil but maybe its a humbucker.
M
 

walrus

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Kurt, that's pretty cool how those all fit perfectly on your table top!

walrus
 

The Guilds of Grot

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Just for the record, they are all from different dates. Guild usually put out Price Lists twice a year! (Or in the case of '93, three that year!)
 
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