Corona Era Guild X-500's

[tomvwash]

Does anyone have a point of comparison or comment on these? Looking at a 2003, for half the price of what little there is at the moment from Westerly Era and with nowhere else to go with CV lockdown, tempted to spring for this... and / or the 2014 Guild GRS limited run X-500. Just appeared on Reverb today. Thank you.

Tom

 

[GGJaguar]

Corona-era archtops are very well made so no worries there. The main thing, to me, is the FMIC HB-1 pickups. These sound fine (to me) in the semi-hollow Starfire IV, but in fully hollow archtops I think they lack the richer sound of the Duncan SD-1 pickups in the late Westerly examples. The good thing is the FMIC pickups are PAF-sized so swapping them for any standard PAF humbucker is an option. Happy guitar hunting!

 

[GAD]

I agree. Every Corona-made archtop and hollow-body I've owned has been killer with the exception of the pickups (aside from the killer Antiquities in my SF3-90).

@GGJaguar your avatar becomes more fitting with each passing day.

 

[tomvwash]

I agree. Every Corona-made archtop and hollow-body I've owned has been killer with the exception of the pickups (aside from the killer Antiquities in my SF3-90).

@GGJaguar your avatar becomes more fitting with each passing day.

I didn't realize the HB1's are so out of favor. Gad's Ramblings sees them differently.

Guild Full-Sized HB1 and SD1 Pickup Variations | GAD's Ramblings

One of the questions I see on the guitar forums quite a bit is, “What kind of pickups does this Guild guitar have?” Since I’ve posted in many of these threads, I seem to get a lot of emails with the same question. I thought that I might write up a quick summary of the …

www.gad.net

 

[GGJaguar]

I didn't realize the HB1's are so out of favor. Gad's Ramblings sees them differently.

The original Guild HB-1s used from about 1971-94 are very well regarded (those are the ones that GAD loves) and have not fallen out of favor. When Fender (FMIC) started making them around 1998, they changed the "recipe" which changed the sound. To my ears, the FMIC HB-1s are very generic sounding PAF style pickups.

 

[tomvwash]

The original Guild HB-1s used from about 1971-94 are very well regarded (those are the ones that GAD loves) and have not fallen out of favor. When Fender (FMIC) started making them around 1998, they changed the "recipe" which changed the sound. To my ears, the FMIC HB-1s are very generic sounding PAF style pickups.

Thank you for clarifying. Big help!

 

[GGJaguar]

@GGJaguar your avatar becomes more fitting with each passing day.

I know, it's a little creepy, right?