Fake S-100 keeps getting faker?

bluesypicky

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we could just wait for Hans to chime in.

This is what I have been quietly waiting for.....
Of all the items pointing to the fact that we are looking at a trashed Guild (per serial number), the 3 piece body is the most enigmatic, no doubt.
Love to hear whether the man has any facts on this to put all the speculations to rest.
 

JohnW63

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So, perhaps we have Guild neck and pickups ? Maybe some of the hardware ?

Just how hard would it be to build a body and and PROPERLY install the Guild stuff on it and have a good playing guitar ?
 

mavuser

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the neck is a 1971 and has some value if it is clean and had no breaks/repairs. it is one of the last of the 3-line Chesterfields, which is much less common on a Westerly Guild. so if u parted it out, you have the pickups, the tuners, the other hardware/electronics and then the neck would have some value to someone with a nice early 70s S-100 (or whatever else it fits), if it were to just have a nasty broken neck or (3 line Chesterfield) headstock. if u can get it set up to play nice though, id be in no hurry to do that.
 

Brynot

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Sorry I had so much trouble posting pictures. Ridiculous considering I'm a photographer and I used to code websites and host them. It's the first time I've been on a message board where I had to go find an image hosting site. I'm still not sure what I'm doing wrong with photobucket.

Anyhow, thanks for everyone's input so far. I hadn't noticed anyone posting until a few minutes ago. Tomorrow, I'll take some much higher quality images with closer detail made to the areas everyone has been suggesting.

My own research has me believing the hb1 is one of the "made by Guild" pickups for another company. Simply because there is no solder point on the rear of the pickup, the wires go under. Perhaps it was rewired as to include 5 wires for the phaser? It appears that the solder posts have been clipped off and moved under the rear plate. I'll show it in a photo tomorrow. Also, no scratched in date, but there is a red smudge.

The wood from the neck looks like it's a match for the wings, but the back cavity is not routed very well. I'll show that also. The wings are joined to the body with tongue and groove. The pots have been replaced, and the knobs are almost close to the positions in a DeArmond. Plus, obviously, the bridge and tailpiece are not Guild S100.

I really don't know if the thing would ever be playable for anything other than slide. I'm no expert, but I have to believe the neck joining the body that low is the culprit.

Alright. Pics tomorrow. Thanks again.
 

fronobulax

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Sorry I had so much trouble posting pictures. Ridiculous considering I'm a photographer and I used to code websites and host them. It's the first time I've been on a message board where I had to go find an image hosting site. I'm still not sure what I'm doing wrong with photobucket.

LTG may be the only such site on the internet. The policy is deliberate and rooted in costs and liabilities. If images can be uploaded to and stored at LTG then LTG could be liable for copyright violations or hosting inappropriate content. If images are stored at LTG and someone elsewhere links to them then the bandwidth associated with serving that image comes from what LTG is paying for. A conservative approach to be sure but appropriate for what is essentially a one man operation paid for out of pocket and by donations. In 2017 there may be other ways to protect from those hazards but telling people how to post pictures gives us something to talk about on slow days.

When editing a post you can use Go Advanced and then Preview to confirm that what you have put between the IMG tags is what you want. When I am trying to help out as a Moderator, I keep clicking on the hosting site until I get the image I want displayed there, I then copy the image location (right click in Firefox) and paste it into an "empty" browser address bar as a test. If the resulting display is the image then I pate the same thing between the IMG tabs.

If the control cavity is crude then that reinforces the idea that it is not Guild's body. I wish I could confirm that we have either seen one other three piece body like this or this guitar at some point in the past.
 

Brynot

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I get the whole liability thing. I didn't mean this was the first time I ran into this. I meant this was the first time I've had to post pictures that were not hosted by my own personal server. Therefore, grabbing the img URL has always been simple. I couldn't get back to the URL attached to my photos on photobucket. I'll get it straight this time. Okay, back to guitars 😀
 

GAD

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Sorry I had so much trouble posting pictures. Ridiculous considering I'm a photographer and I used to code websites and host them. It's the first time I've been on a message board where I had to go find an image hosting site. I'm still not sure what I'm doing wrong with photobucket.

Anyhow, thanks for everyone's input so far. I hadn't noticed anyone posting until a few minutes ago. Tomorrow, I'll take some much higher quality images with closer detail made to the areas everyone has been suggesting.

My own research has me believing the hb1 is one of the "made by Guild" pickups for another company. Simply because there is no solder point on the rear of the pickup, the wires go under. Perhaps it was rewired as to include 5 wires for the phaser? It appears that the solder posts have been clipped off and moved under the rear plate. I'll show it in a photo tomorrow. Also, no scratched in date, but there is a red smudge.

The wood from the neck looks like it's a match for the wings, but the back cavity is not routed very well. I'll show that also. The wings are joined to the body with tongue and groove. The pots have been replaced, and the knobs are almost close to the positions in a DeArmond. Plus, obviously, the bridge and tailpiece are not Guild S100.

I really don't know if the thing would ever be playable for anything other than slide. I'm no expert, but I have to believe the neck joining the body that low is the culprit.

Alright. Pics tomorrow. Thanks again.

Does the pickup have two orange wires, a red, and a black? If so, then it's a late-model HB1 and is completely normal. Here's one from a 1994 Starfire 4:

B0Z3190_800.jpg
 

Brynot

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Here are some detailed pictures. I tried to include all of the different subjects that everyone brought up. Talk amongst yourselves :)
DSC_6557_zpso61tcrqt.jpg

DSC_6560_zpsz9bdkabx.jpg

DSC_6562_zpstff0iekb.jpg

DSC_6568_zpsuc9allrn.jpg

DSC_6570_zpsefpqt4og.jpg

DSC_6585_zpsw3yjkebv.jpg

DSC_6548_zpslnifkie8.jpg
 

fronobulax

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If this is the back of the bass side of the guitar, it looks like the bevel I was looking for is there. \

DSC_6585_zpsw3yjkebv.jpg


These pictures make the transition from top to side look more like what I was expecting.

My current hypothesis is that someone had an original S-100, did some work to change the pickups/electronics, botched it and then salvaged what they could by cutting the body in thirds and mating the "wings" and neck to a new slab.
 

GAD

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Here are some detailed pictures. I tried to include all of the different subjects that everyone brought up. Talk amongst yourselves :)




DSC_6570_zpsefpqt4og.jpg

Yikes! I think you're right - someone pulled the cover and made it 4-wire.

Note also that this is one of those "red dot" HB1s talked about in that thread that I cannot for the life of me locate!
 

Brynot

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Here's the electronic cavity and a shot of the inlay. Some of the inlays seem like they don't exactly fit.
I will say that if this is a guitar that has been reconstructed from an original S100 that has been split, the joints are exceptionally done.
The seams for where the guitar joins together are pretty flawless. The routing around the diameter is pretty crappy.
DSC_6559_zps5lzbacfl.jpg

DSC_6572_zpsre1gka4d.jpg
 
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Qvart

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Well, whoever did it has some woodworking skills, but not guitar building skills.

The worst of it is the neck-body joint: Like I said, the binding/fret board shouldn't be flush with the body. The neck had wood cut from it which makes the fret board too low at the joint and the strings sit way too high. I don't think that could be remedied by anything save maybe a super low bridge, or if the neck had been set at a steeper angle as Guild did post mid-1975.

Terrible job of gluing the neck too.

Is that maple center two pieces?

DSC_6562_zps7fdubncb.jpg


Early 70's S-100's had neck sets that made the fret board essentially parallel to the body. There needs to be some wood between the end of the fret board and the body for that to work (and even then it resulted in very low string tension over the bridge).

At some point in '75 they changed the neck set and the wood between the fret board and body was trimmed, but this worked with the fret board no longer set parallel to the body and using a slightly different bridge.

neckjoint.jpg


neckheight.jpg
 
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We talked about the red dot on the back of the HB-1's in a tech thread about these pick ups. I mentioned my 71 M-75 had these marks as did a photo the was on GAD's blog. This could go along with the 3-line chesterfield inlay on the headstock. It's time for a neck reset and new knobs.
Thanks john
 

fronobulax

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The shape of the control cavity, apparent depth, routing for the cover and location of the screw holes all look "original" to me. It has been gutted, however, since Guild lined everything with copper foil. There was no wood visible inside. Just copper.
 

Qvart

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Here's the electronic cavity and a shot of the inlay. Some of the inlays seem like they don't exactly fit.
I will say that if this is a guitar that has been reconstructed from an original S100 that has been split, the joints are exceptionally done.
The seams for where the guitar joins together are pretty flawless. The routing around the diameter is pretty crappy.

Yikes. The input jack should be on the front too not the side.

04wiring.jpg
 

kakerlak

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Definitely a Guild neck, definitely not a Guild body (or even any portion of a Guild body). Those inlay gaps are normal -- either whatever they were using to fill the edges, post-inlay had a tendency to degrade and fall out or the inlays themselves tended to shrink, but it's exactly how my old '71 looked.
 

fronobulax

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definitely not a Guild body (or even any portion of a Guild body).

To quote Mart Twain, it's a difference of opinion that makes horse races, but I am quite comfortable in believing the wings were either sawn off an intact original body or made on the same tooling. We are just looking at pictures and I will claim some intuition from living with a JS II for decades but I would like to know why you think otherwise.
 

Qvart

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To quote Mart Twain, it's a difference of opinion that makes horse races, but I am quite comfortable in believing the wings were either sawn off an intact original body or made on the same tooling. We are just looking at pictures and I will claim some intuition from living with a JS II for decades but I would like to know why you think otherwise.

It keeps getting weirder. The body shape looks right and the two "wings" seem like they could have been cut from an original S-100 body, but they are flush with the maple center which appears to be a little to wide for the neck so perhaps the two "wings" are too wide as well.

Also - unless there was a change between '71 and '73 - the control cavity routing shape looks completely wrong.

cavity_zpsspfqit89.jpg
 
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