Hey guys, I'm Ron. I'm the (very) amateur luthier who patched this guitar up. Guildedagain reached out to me earlier today to ask about this guitar, it's been fun reading your comments.
Thought I'd add what I know and correct some information I gave guildedagain - I run about 5 guitars a month through my shop, and fixed this one up almost two years ago, I got the wiring and fret info mixed up with some other repairs I've done.
I found this guitar (and a slew of others) when I bought a banjo off the local classifieds. I run a Guitars for Vets chapter, so when I buy or repair instruments, I ask people if they have any guitars they would be interested in donating to the program. The banjo was being sold by the widow of a guitar geek (and combat veteran), she showed me a room of guitars she was trying to sell to pay for funeral costs. I bought a 1969 Gibson Dove, the Starfire, and a banjo for myself, and helped her price the rest of the guitars. About two months later, her daughter called me and donated the unsold guitars to the program. A few have been given out to veterans, the rest are still awaiting repairs. To be absolutely clear, I don't resell donated guitars, but the national program maintains a reverb store that is worth following:
https://reverb.com/shop/guitars4vets.
Every one of the guitars from that estate have needed extensive repairs (especially that Dove, which is now an amazing player). The former owner was extremely enthusiastic with his mods, and did a lot of really funky stuff (like putting access plates on this guy). Please don't think I'm being judgmental, I've done some janky stuff on my own guitars (such as the spider web of wiring on this guild).
The Starfire was a wall hanger when I bought it. The frets were uneven and there was buzzing everywhere, sound only output from one pickup, and the outer strings tried to slip off the fretboard whenever they were fretted. It had obviously been loved half to death, which is a lot of what attracted me to it. The widow and her daughter couldn't remember the last time it had been played. Makes sense that it used to be black and had a bound neck.
It was one of my daily players for almost two years. I was sad to see it go, but after I bought a T5z during the Taylor spring sale, it just didn't get enough playtime to keep around.
What happened to this guitar while it was mine:
1 - Bought the strap and new knobs from the Guild website. Highly recommend the strap, it's a nice, wide, thick piece of quality leather. If another guild crosses my path, another strap will surely join it. Started breaking in the strap with a few rounds of mink oil and rolling it up in both directions, then a couple hundred hours of playtime. It was just getting to feel "right" when I sold it.
2 - Added those sweet d'addario elliptical end pins. There were end pins on it before, but they were mismatched and most definitely not original.
3 - I told Guildedagain on the phone that I had refretted with EVO Gold (I love the stuff and have it on almost all my own guitars), but looking at the pictures, I led him astray. Those are the frets that were on it before. They did get a badly needed level and crown job.
4 - Converted the 2 wire pickups to 4 wire using this method:
https://www.robchapman.tv/forum/threads/how-to-convert-2-conductor-humbuckers-to-4-conductor.28147/
5 - Custom wiring. I usually use the seymour duncan JP setup, but looking at the pictures, I did something else on this guy. Apologies to guildedagain for the mixup. After reading this thread I reached out to Mightymole and confirmed that the volume pots were and are working properly. I experimented a lot with the wiring on this guitar, and don't properly remember what all I did to frankenstein it together.
6 - New nut. The neck on this guy is very thin and narrow. If it was bound, then the neck was shaved down on the sides at least as far as the binding channels were originally. I had to bring the strings in quite a bit on each side to keep them from slipping off the side of the neck when I played, and it seems like they were still too close for comfort for other players.
And that's it. I tried to keep it looking as close to "as found" condition as I could while turning it into a player. This is a very cool guitar that I loved. I'm thrilled it's going on to a good home.