Best Years For Pilots? Years To Avoid?

[Bobby B]

I've been thinking about picking up a Pilot, but don't really know a lot about the different models and things that might be best to avoid or great options to look for... Obviously the pre-Fender days, but beyond that, any insight would be most helpful.

Thanks!

 

[krysh]

welcome to ltg, bobby.

generally you can't go wrong with any pilot.
introduced in 1983/84 and stopped in 1995 by fender they had 4 evolution stages.
the first 2 have pickguards, the p-pickup in the correct preciscion position and the few very first ones only had 20 frets and no body shaping which was the 1st run.
after 1984 the most common type without pickguard appeared until in 1994/5 it was called pro 4/5 with a different headshape, different body shapings, 2-band eq and mostly maple bodies that until then had been an option or had been used on the advanced pilots that also had block inlays and neck binding. they are great and completely underrated basses. the regular variations are: 4/5 strings, maple/poplar bodies, fretted/ftretless, maple necks with maple and rosewood fretboards, emg/dimarzio/bartolini pickups, muller or kahler tremolo bridge
I own three, and I love them all.

except hans, only grot can tell you more about them:
the guilds of grot

 

[fronobulax]

Welcome again, Bobby. Krysh and Grot are the Pilot experts. I seem to recall Grot has answered a similar question so if nothing new pops up it might be worth trying to Search.

For the record, the general consensus is that quality of instruments built in Westerly remained the same or got better once Fender bought the company. "Obviously the pre-Fender days" is not obvious or a given. Fender's stewardship of the Guild brand includes many missteps but none of them apply to Pilots and their production, except possibly discontinuing them :wink:

 

[jte]

Remember that FMIC bought Guild in 1995, and the Pilot was discontinued then so there aren't any "post Fender" Pilots. Actually, Guild's distribution just before FMIC bought the company was so sparse and the company was in pretty tough straits that I think the Pilot was actually no longer in production before FMIC took over.

I was a Guild dealer (Fender, Gibson, Ovation, Takamine, Washburn, G&L, Yamaha, etc. as well) from '77-'88. The Pilot was the best bass deal out there when they came out. Slim neck (even though I like big fat Precision necks personally, the thin neck was more sellable), active EMGs, solid bridge, and light weight when the biggest contenders were Fenders that tended to be very heavy and only one model, a Precision, had active electronics or the G&L L-2000e or the struggling (at the time) Music Man StingRay. It was decidedly NON-Fenderish and appealed to a LOT of different folks. It was what a lot of people wanted without having to buy a new bass and modify it. It certainly helped that Guild started the Hartke distribution and many ads featured Darryl Jones who played a Pilot with Sting's first non-Police project, and they had some promo with Jaco Pastorious featuring the Pilot and the Hartke 4x10 (I still have one of those Guild posters).

No years to avoid as has been said. There are a lot of variations so specifics can be very "fluid". Different headstocks and different bridges seem to be the most common variations within one model number. The Pros (at least all I've seen) had gold hardware and a Mighty Mite pre-amp with active bass and treble in addition to the EMG pickups. The most common Pilots had the EMG P/J with the P coils reversed and standard passive V/V/T (personally the best way to run EMG's- and that Mighty Mite pre wasn't nearly as good as the pickups without the pre was). For most of the run, you could also order them with passive PUPs (some generic ones at first, then later they used DiMarzio P/J PUPs) but hardly any dealers did.

John

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

Here's a link discussing some of the basses krysh mentioned.


Here's a quick visual primer of Pilot basses;

 

[Bobby B]

Sorry I didn't reply to this thread earlier, I did read all of your informative replies and thank you very much for all the information. My quest for a Pilot continues... with more focus about what I want in one.

 

[killdeer43]

That's quite the show there, Grot. I think I need a drink! :lol:

Joe

 

[Bobby B]

Finally got my Pilot bass. Decided the whammy bar looked like fun! :twisted:

 

[fronobulax]

Finally got my Pilot bass. Decided the whammy bar looked like fun! :twisted:

Nice. If you figure it out, explain to an old school player what you would do with a whammy bar on a bass :wink: A left hand vibrato has been good enough for me.

 

[hieronymous]

Cool! Now when you play "Third Stone from the Sun" during your bass solo you can do some nice vibrato...

 

[Bobby B]

We play some surf instrumental stuff that it might be useful with. Bending strings only makes the note higher, it doesn't make it lower. There's a song we play that might be nice to drop down from the open E to a D instead of going up. I dunno, I think messing with the guitards heads is probably the single greatest benefit from it, but it's a Pilot so a great bass aside from the whammy bar aspect.

 

[hieronymous]

I dunno, I think messing with the guitards heads is probably the single greatest benefit from it

I like the way you think! :twisted:

I know Jerry Peek played a Pilot with Steve Morse, but can't remember if his had a whammy or not. I always wanted a bass with a whammy bar - closest I got was a Fender Bass VI reissue, but the vibrato unit doesn't really work the way it's supposed to plus I can't get a bar that will fit.

Anyway, awesome score!

 

[jte]

Jerry Peek did indeed have at least one Pilot with a Kahler trem. I saw him at NAMM one year with Guild (where I also met Jose Feliciano!) with it doing some very pretty things and emulating a fretless.

The Bass VI should use the same bar as the Jazzmaster and Jaguar. There are two different sizes (diameters) for the replacement arms because they had the hardware with both metric and SAE sized parts, and they're NOT close enough to be interchangeable... I finallly had to buy a complete tailpiece assembly for my beloved Jazzmaster back in the late '80s because I couldn't find the correct replacement, but later Fender started making the Vintage Series '62 Jazzmaster in the US and used an assembly that was the same as the original US made ones...

The Bass VI has a very cool trem (but I'm a sucker for Jazzmaster trems anyway) but it's not for dive-bombing to the pits of hell and back. Much more cool for shimmering little moves like Chet Atkins used his Bibsby for, or the cool dive on The Ventures' recording of "Walk, Don't Run", and that Chris Issac song ("Cruel Games" maybe?).

John