A young lady enjoys her NS SF-1 Bass

mellowgerman

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Gotta love some Zombies. Always thought Chris White was played some cool bass parts. Nothing super flashy but contributed to the songs very nicely.
 

lungimsam

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Nice!!!! I’m guessing it’s a Cordoba NS and not a FMIC since it sounds better than mine ever did!!!!
 

walrus

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She's good, and I love her "happy" playing!

walrus
 

cupric

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Guild Basses are so cool looking!
 

fronobulax

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Thanks.
Nice!!!! I’m guessing it’s a Cordoba NS and not a FMIC since it sounds better than mine ever did!!!!


The youtube comment says it is a 2017.

Since you are the first person I can recall claiming that the FMIC and the CMG NS basses sound different are you basing that on having one of each in the same room at the same time or something else?

You may be right although I can't recall that the factory or any of the specs changed and so would be hard pressed to justify how the change of ownership manifested itself in the instrument.
 

lungimsam

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1. Cordoba told me body specs changed after they took over. I don’t know if electronics did also.
2. Basing it on Cordobas vs. mine in person only and FMIC early demos on YouTube heard by me online. So subjective. But there is a deep character difference in the sound to me that is not just fingers or rigs. Core voice of the instrument. Even the new Un-Starfire Starfire sounds better and other-voiced than mine. CMG sounds bigger/fatter/more powerful to me. FMIC sounds more wimpy and mellow to me. Took a lot to get mine more powerful sounding but nowhere near the CMG’s I am hearing.
3. Also , to my ears vintage sounds different than CMG and FMIC for a total of three Starfire voices to select from, which may not be a bad thing.
 
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fronobulax

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1. Cordoba told me body specs changed after they took over. I don’t know if electronics did also.
2. Basing it on Cordobas vs. mine in person only and FMIC early demos on YouTube heard by me online. So subjective. But there is a deep character difference in the sound to me that is not just fingers or rigs. Core voice of the instrument. Even the new Un-Starfire Starfire sounds better and other-voiced than mine. CMG sounds bigger/fatter/more powerful to me. FMIC sounds more wimpy and mellow to me. Took a lot to get mine more powerful sounding but nowhere near the CMG’s I am hearing.
3. Also , to my ears vintage sounds different than CMG and FMIC for a total of three Starfire voices to select from, which may not be a bad thing.

Thanks.

I wonder if there is any documentation of which body dimensions changed. I believe that CMG told you that, but given CMG's reputation of not always knowing what was going on before they bought Guild, a cynic might question is what they told you was true.

I find demos and recordings useful but not definitive. It could be my ears. For example sometimes I will be practicing with headphones and do nothing but unplug the phones and take them off and I will hear something new and different and wonder if I still have the same bass. Similarly my usual amp has 2x5" speakers but sometimes I get nostalgic and use my old amp with 1x15". Completely different sounds. If I had never heard a Starfire and stuck with the big amp I would have nothing but nice things to say about a JS II with humbuckers :) Cell phone recordings of my playing don't sound quite like what I expect.

I note that https://anniestela.bandcamp.com/track/carry-it-all is what mgod offered when he was asked about a definitive Starfire II sound he recorded and I don't always hear much of my instrument in that recording.

I guess my point is I am less likely to conclude similarities and differences are significant and repeatable from recordings. But I can't argue with what you hear :)

I've saying I can hear a difference between both a '67 and a FMIC NS and a '67 SF I and a memory of a (sweet spot) '66 SF I so we are in agreement that not every "Starfire" sounds the same.

Thank you again.
 

Minnesota Flats

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And, though differences in age, dimensions, construction, electronics and hardware can, in general, tend to make for differences in tone, we all know that, even among several instruments of the same vintage and even among ones that are sequential in the same production run, there can be individual "magic" basses as well as total duds. Same is true of guitars.

And then, of course, there's the "finger factor" (as in, "whose fingers are doing the playing").
 

mellowgerman

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And, though differences in age, dimensions, construction, electronics and hardware can, in general, tend to make for differences in tone, we all know that, even among several instruments of the same vintage and even among ones that are sequential in the same production run, there can be individual "magic" basses as well as total duds. Same is true of guitars.

And then, of course, there's the "finger factor" (as in, "whose fingers are doing the playing").


I'm a big believer in this thought that the acoustically "good" sounding and resonating guitars come down to the individual pieces of wood that an instrument is made out of, regardless of whether the model at hand is acoustic, hollowbody, semi-hollow, solid-body.
Perfect example was my brother's circa-2000 Squier Affinity Stratocaster. I still wish we would have never allowed that one to "get away"... even after all the dings and dents and punk rock stickers that ended up on it. Completely stock, it just felt/played/sounded better than any other Strat I ever came across. My dad's friend even offered to trade his USA G&L for it! I will say I'm not a big fan of Strats and I'm sure others would disagree, at least in the tone department, but there was no denying that the playability and comfort of that guitar was legendary. I always had it in my head that I'd pick up another one since Squier Affinity guitars are so common and so cheap, but none of the others ever came remotely close.
I have a particularly nice specimen of a Mexican Telecaster now that I would never let go of. Hard to say if I would have preferred the ol' Squier Strat over it, but either way, lesson learned!
 

Minnesota Flats

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Yeah: "the one that got away"...

I'm still haunted by a Kalamazoo-made Epiphone Riviera that I picked up during the early 1970s. It had started life as a "Royal Tan" (kind of a non-metallic, transluscent, goldish 'burst) 12-string. Somebody must have dropped it and busted the headstock, because it came to me as a 6-string. Thing was, I didn't realize this immediately because the repair/conversion had been professionally and seamlessly done by a master luthier (Satterly & Chapin in S.F., CA): the joint in the cut-down headstock was hidden by book-matched, mahogany veneer on the back and sides and was also undetectable on the "face" of the headstock (which retained the pearloid “Epiphone” logo). Original Kluson tuners tuners had been replaced with Grover Rotomatics, but there were no extra screw holes because the Kluson screw holes were hidden by the mahogany veneer. After repairs were made, the neck and headstock and back of the body had been refinished. He must have also touched up, feathered in and buffed out any dings, because the guitar looked brand new.

Only later, when I examined the headstock closely (because I wondered why the headstock outline was a bit wider than those I’d seen on other Rivieras and why the Tailpiece was a Gibson-style trapeze instead of an Epiphone “Frequensator”), did I realize all this.

But that was all cosmetic. Part of what actually made this guitar so cool was the chunky, 12-string neck profile, which survived the "conversion" intact. Ever pick up a guitar whose neck falls into your hand as if it was custom shaped just for you? That was how this one was for me.

The pickups were the Epiphone-style “Mini-Humbuckers” which meant they had a bit more clarity and articulation than full-sized, darker, Gibson Humbuckers. Ran it through a matched, minty 6G6B Blonde Bassman head and cab.

Like an idiot, I sold this guitar and that amp (albeit, the guitar for twice what I’d paid for it and the amp for four times what I'd paid for it) a few years after I’d bought them, probably to finance some guitar I thought I had to have at the time but can now no longer even remember.

Sometimes, you don’t realize how good something is until you’ve let it slip through your fingers…
 
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