rbrcbr
Member
Hey everyone! New to the forum here, first post, but I've lurked a bit here and there recently due to my growing obsession with vintage Guilds. That obsession culminated recently and as of last Friday, I am the proud owner of a 1962 Starfire III! One owner, non original case (because the original was too beat up it was replaced at some point), and it came with a vintage strap! It is also my first real vintage guitar, so that is super exciting.
Aside from the case, everything on it is original. Good bit of finish checking and some dings, but pretty clean overall and the binding hasn't shrunk at all. Tuners are a bit stiff but I'm sure we can get them working well again easily. The frets are fairly worn and oxidized but still playable. It has some pretty hefty, old flatwounds on it currently and the action is a fairly high and gets higher further up the neck, but the neck is nicely worn in in some spots and is a good size overall so it's comfortable. It plays alright now but will hopefully be super good to go after a set up. The Guildsby is super broken in and feels great.
I took it to my tech yesterday to have him evaluate it and see what we were working with in terms of getting it setup or whether it needs a refret, or even possibly a neck reset.
The neck is straight (if I remember correctly) but the action is pretty high up, and the strings are already really close to the bridge pickup. His first reaction on seeing this was that it's possible it'll need a reset, as we can't do a whole lot with lowering the bridge to adjust the action. It also turns out the strings on it are 13-56 flatwounds, so gnarly. No wonder playing it has been sort of difficult. He's going to do a set up with 11-49 roundwounds and see if maybe the relieved tension from taking those huge flatwounds off is enough to bring the neck down a bit and give us some more room to adjust it. He also mentioned maybe taking the spacer out from underneath the bridge pickup to give us a bit more room to adjust. It's playable as it is (albeit difficult, unless capo'd higher up), so hopefully it will be more playable afterwards and we can put off the neck reset for a while. My hope was that it being a one owner guitar, and having been taken care of, that it wouldn't need a reset. But, as I read someone say on here - "there are vintage guitars that have had a neck reset, and those that need one." So I know somewhere in the future, it's on the table.
After talking to my tech more, he did say he doesn't feel quite comfortable with doing the reset and would have to research it more as he'd hate to ruin a good guitar. He's done plenty of acoustics, but never one of these old Guilds. I guess his point was that there's no cap at the neck joint, it looks like it's all one piece so he's not certain how he could go about it and is hoping we can avoid the reset. I trust my tech, he's great at what he does and has been doing it for a long time, but might consider looking to someone more versed in these old Guilds if it comes down to it just to be safe.
From what I've read you all post, Guilds tend to be harder to reset, and some techs refuse to even work on them because they're more labor intensive. I'm looking more into it all over the LTG archives, but figured I may as well ask and post the NGD!
So, has anyone here had a reset done on one of these old Starfires? Or know a tech who is well experienced in doing these on old Guilds? I know it's going to end up being costly, so I just want to make sure the job is done well and the guitar comes out as good as possible on the other end. I got it through Guitar Center, so worst case scenario I have their tech confirm that it needs a reset and have them refund me some money to cover the reset cost.
Also curious - I've heard there might be some people here who can actually date when this one was made? I suppose it's an early '62, based on the lack of back binding, but so far haven't found a source to get a real ballpark of when it was made in '62. All I can find is that back binding was added to these models in '62.
Anyway, more pics below!
Aside from the case, everything on it is original. Good bit of finish checking and some dings, but pretty clean overall and the binding hasn't shrunk at all. Tuners are a bit stiff but I'm sure we can get them working well again easily. The frets are fairly worn and oxidized but still playable. It has some pretty hefty, old flatwounds on it currently and the action is a fairly high and gets higher further up the neck, but the neck is nicely worn in in some spots and is a good size overall so it's comfortable. It plays alright now but will hopefully be super good to go after a set up. The Guildsby is super broken in and feels great.
I took it to my tech yesterday to have him evaluate it and see what we were working with in terms of getting it setup or whether it needs a refret, or even possibly a neck reset.
The neck is straight (if I remember correctly) but the action is pretty high up, and the strings are already really close to the bridge pickup. His first reaction on seeing this was that it's possible it'll need a reset, as we can't do a whole lot with lowering the bridge to adjust the action. It also turns out the strings on it are 13-56 flatwounds, so gnarly. No wonder playing it has been sort of difficult. He's going to do a set up with 11-49 roundwounds and see if maybe the relieved tension from taking those huge flatwounds off is enough to bring the neck down a bit and give us some more room to adjust it. He also mentioned maybe taking the spacer out from underneath the bridge pickup to give us a bit more room to adjust. It's playable as it is (albeit difficult, unless capo'd higher up), so hopefully it will be more playable afterwards and we can put off the neck reset for a while. My hope was that it being a one owner guitar, and having been taken care of, that it wouldn't need a reset. But, as I read someone say on here - "there are vintage guitars that have had a neck reset, and those that need one." So I know somewhere in the future, it's on the table.
After talking to my tech more, he did say he doesn't feel quite comfortable with doing the reset and would have to research it more as he'd hate to ruin a good guitar. He's done plenty of acoustics, but never one of these old Guilds. I guess his point was that there's no cap at the neck joint, it looks like it's all one piece so he's not certain how he could go about it and is hoping we can avoid the reset. I trust my tech, he's great at what he does and has been doing it for a long time, but might consider looking to someone more versed in these old Guilds if it comes down to it just to be safe.
From what I've read you all post, Guilds tend to be harder to reset, and some techs refuse to even work on them because they're more labor intensive. I'm looking more into it all over the LTG archives, but figured I may as well ask and post the NGD!
So, has anyone here had a reset done on one of these old Starfires? Or know a tech who is well experienced in doing these on old Guilds? I know it's going to end up being costly, so I just want to make sure the job is done well and the guitar comes out as good as possible on the other end. I got it through Guitar Center, so worst case scenario I have their tech confirm that it needs a reset and have them refund me some money to cover the reset cost.
Also curious - I've heard there might be some people here who can actually date when this one was made? I suppose it's an early '62, based on the lack of back binding, but so far haven't found a source to get a real ballpark of when it was made in '62. All I can find is that back binding was added to these models in '62.
Anyway, more pics below!