A newark street X-175B, or is it?

[mad dog]

Hey all. Just picked up a used Guild today. Advertised as an X-175B. The owner had modded it, not caring much for the Franz repros. He took off the Bigsby, used a trapeze tailpiece. Swapped in an excellent bridge, forget the model, swapped in SD 59 humbuckers, also replacing the pots.

All of which is fine by me. A nice looking blond guitar. I get it home, check it out, see the label inside marked A-150B. Very strange. There were definitely two Franz pickups installed. (Got them in a bag along with the original pots.) Checked with the owner, who said it came mislabelled from the factory, definitely is an X-175B, and was sold to him that way.

Has anyone heard of such a thing? Other than the pickups (number, type and mounting) what are the differences between the blond X175B body and the A150B?
Thanks
MD

 

[Guildadelphia]

Need pictures.....sounds interesting.

 

[Walter Broes]

The 150 has a solid (pressed, not carved) spruce top, supposedly, and X bracing instead of the 175's parallel bracing. So it's probably mislabeled.

 

[mad dog]

Thanks Walter. I'm thinking it has to be mislabelled, since it did come with two inset pickups.

It's a well made guitar. Not stock now ... has me thinking. Looks like the screw holes for the Franz pickups line up with dogear P90 pickups. I'm wondering how this guitar would sound with P90s. One other mod I forgot to mention. The guy put a master volume in over by the pickup selector. Clearly influenced by Gretsch and the older Guilds.

It has .12s on now, Thomastik flatwounds. Not sure I care much for flatwounds on this guitar. They take some of the presence off the bass strings. Might try a compromise set: round wound bass strings from an .11 set, then upsize the plain strings to .19, .15 and .12.
MD

 

[JohnW63]

That's a lot of changes on one guitar. Almost like that wanted something else, and used the one they bought as a platform to build it.

 

[Walter Broes]

MD, vintage Gibson and vintage Franz dogear covers have the same cover screw spacing, and the same pole spacing too. They failed miserably sound wise (which is a happy accident in this case, Franzes are beautiful in their own right!), but they were clearly trying to clone a P90.

 

[mad dog]

Ah, good to know. My little plan might work. This guitar does sound good with the SD 59s in there. Though for HB tone, I could think of a few sets that would sound better for the jazz practicing I'll be doing (started jazz lessons a couple months ago). However, I keep wondering how it would sound with a set of Wolfetone P-90s installed.

What I'd really been searching for all along is a P90 equipped hollowbody, something in the early ES-175, ES-350 vein. That's what drew me to the X-175B to start. It seems to be a real contender in terms of quality for price. I'll never be able to afford the real deal P90 jazz boxes. In the meantime, this mutt X-175B might be a fine alternative.

I'll take it to my luthier buddy this week and poke around. With luck, the routes didn't have to get dremeled out further to accommodate the HB surrounds. I'm also curious how this guitar would do with a heavier metal tailpiece. ES-350 like. It has a light trapeze (like the one on my ES-335) now.

MD

 

[Guildadelphia]

Can't see why that a pair of good P-90s wouldn't sound great in an X175B. I love the Franz repros in my X175B....but they are definately different animals than P-90s, which is a good thing. I've got the classic P-90 sound covered with my Epi '61 Reissue Casino which came stock with real Gibson P-90s. Sounds like this new "mystery" Guild is gonna be a bit of an adventure, but a good adventure. Keep us posted on how and where things go.

 

[jcwu]

I have Fralin P92s in my CE100D, and they sound warmer, rounder, more bell-like than the Franz in my T100. Body size and year-of-manufacture differences aside, the Franz is a lot more brash. That's really the only way I can describe it.

 

[NYWolf]

Hi, that's my former guitar we talking about here:adoration: The mods were all my idea (but not my performance), just to get the jazzier sound out of this box. Shoot me, but those reissued Franz pickups made me hate all single coils for a while! Until I got my X50 with the original Franz, and kinda grown to like them again. But still, given a choice, I'd take SD 59 for a jazz archtop.

Regarding the label, Rocky from http://www.streetsoundsnyc.com/ brought my attention to that first. I bought it from the store, and he assured me it's a factory mistake, he told me the serial number match X-175B, when he put it into database. He asked me if I mind, he would get me a different one, but I didn't care much. I thought for a second it could be A150 body they put the pickups on, and then it would be a unique guitar- solid top and all... But no, it's just a regular X175.

Anyway, it was nice to have it, I played many gigs with that, and glad it found a new home.

 

[mad dog]

Hey Anton, good to hear from you. And it was a pleasure meeting you too. I like this blond guitar ... it has a good feel. And appreciate the mods (especially the better pots), as I too am looking for more jazz than rockabilly sound. It's going to be fun, seeing what I can do with it.

MD