Dear all, I am new to LTG and a have come here to seek some advise: I had wanted a Starfire 4 for a long time and finally purchased one last fall from an estate:
I have always read about the SF4 sounding more airy and trasparent and having more chime than an ES-335. Very much to my surprise my SF4 is not at all like that, it sounds super beefy, the neck pickup is very bassy, regardless of height, overall the guitar delivers a quite mid-rangey, not at all airy and pretty loud output. I have two ES-335s for comparison, and either one is far more airy and transparent, in comparison the SF4 sounds more like a rock guitar. Is that just mine, is there anything I could do?
Remedies that I have already tried are: re-wiring from decoupled to normal (kept it, is better), switching fom 500k to 1Meg master vol (reverted back, no improvement), added a mild treble bleed to master vol (kept it, is better). I have checked the complete electrics, everything seems original and untouched with exception of the changes just listed.
Another thing that came as a suprise is the build quality, which I always expeted to be much better for these Guilds. Although it is build like a tank and weights 4,08kg, I have had quite some rattle on the Muller bridge, even with some pronounced resonance frequencies (which got fixed by now by a luthier), the fretwork was horrible with sharp edges (and got replaced now alltogether along with the above resonance frequencies), the lacquer crackles quite a bit (which is ok), and there used to be very pronounced lacquer crack along the skunk stripe at the back of the neck, beginning at the nut level, and went all the way down to where the 10th fret sits (which by now is almost completely cured, but with a lot of effort and multiple runs of fixing it, initially just with laquer, now also with some super glue and lacquer on top), here a picture from the beginning, before anything got fixed:
Not that big of a deal, but as I am already in a flow, just look at how the bridge pickup doesn'l line up with the string line, I wouldn't have expected this from Guild:
Most of the issues have been fixed by now, but at a pretty hefty cost, the pickguard is still missing and I cannot find a replacement anywhere. If anybody has a spare one that he/she wants to sell feel free to make me an offer!
I am at a point now where I feel ambivalent about the guitar: It does play like butter, but for this I had to have it refretted (which really had huge impact on playability). So far I cannot bond with the rather beefy, mid-rangey sound and there is simply no reason for me to pull out this otherwise wonderful guitar as my ES-335 will always do the job, feel more comfy to me and be much more transparent and airy sounding.
Here the results from the marvelous fret job:
Is this just my SF4 that sounds as described and has the quality issues as shown? Am I expecting the wrong thing from it?
Thanks for your thoughts!
Best Andreas
I have always read about the SF4 sounding more airy and trasparent and having more chime than an ES-335. Very much to my surprise my SF4 is not at all like that, it sounds super beefy, the neck pickup is very bassy, regardless of height, overall the guitar delivers a quite mid-rangey, not at all airy and pretty loud output. I have two ES-335s for comparison, and either one is far more airy and transparent, in comparison the SF4 sounds more like a rock guitar. Is that just mine, is there anything I could do?
Remedies that I have already tried are: re-wiring from decoupled to normal (kept it, is better), switching fom 500k to 1Meg master vol (reverted back, no improvement), added a mild treble bleed to master vol (kept it, is better). I have checked the complete electrics, everything seems original and untouched with exception of the changes just listed.
Another thing that came as a suprise is the build quality, which I always expeted to be much better for these Guilds. Although it is build like a tank and weights 4,08kg, I have had quite some rattle on the Muller bridge, even with some pronounced resonance frequencies (which got fixed by now by a luthier), the fretwork was horrible with sharp edges (and got replaced now alltogether along with the above resonance frequencies), the lacquer crackles quite a bit (which is ok), and there used to be very pronounced lacquer crack along the skunk stripe at the back of the neck, beginning at the nut level, and went all the way down to where the 10th fret sits (which by now is almost completely cured, but with a lot of effort and multiple runs of fixing it, initially just with laquer, now also with some super glue and lacquer on top), here a picture from the beginning, before anything got fixed:
Not that big of a deal, but as I am already in a flow, just look at how the bridge pickup doesn'l line up with the string line, I wouldn't have expected this from Guild:
Most of the issues have been fixed by now, but at a pretty hefty cost, the pickguard is still missing and I cannot find a replacement anywhere. If anybody has a spare one that he/she wants to sell feel free to make me an offer!
I am at a point now where I feel ambivalent about the guitar: It does play like butter, but for this I had to have it refretted (which really had huge impact on playability). So far I cannot bond with the rather beefy, mid-rangey sound and there is simply no reason for me to pull out this otherwise wonderful guitar as my ES-335 will always do the job, feel more comfy to me and be much more transparent and airy sounding.
Here the results from the marvelous fret job:
Is this just my SF4 that sounds as described and has the quality issues as shown? Am I expecting the wrong thing from it?
Thanks for your thoughts!
Best Andreas
