Guild Crossroad Electric Custom

[matsickma]

Hi All,

In the past I have at times mentioned or told a story about a rare Crossroad guitar I saw on ebay years back. It was a Crossroad that was custom to be a chambered double pickup model. Well I was checking through files on a old harddrive that would no longer bootup and came across a picture of it and figured I would post it. I was very interested in this guitar. The guy who posted it owned a music store and it was his own personel guitar. The auction was cancelled in a day as someone probably called the store and just bought it. (Why didn't I think of that idea!) This guitar posted on eBay on October 14, 2004.

As I re-looked at this guitar it looks like it has bridge a stop parts similar to a Nightbird.

Anyway here it is.

M

 

[krysh]

georgeous,
if this one ever comes up again, we will have to fight mat .

 

[hansmoust]

In the past I have at times mentioned or told a story about a rare Crossroad guitar I saw on ebay years back. It was a Crossroad that was custom to be a chambered double pickup model. As I re-looked at this guitar it looks like it has bridge a stop parts similar to a Nightbird.

Hello Mike,

Yes, I remember you mentioned that guitar but you probably also remember the various discussions we had on this forum about guitars put together from leftover parts. While visiting the Westerly plant during the second half of the '90s I've seen various leftover bodies and necks lying around. A lot of these parts ended up with people who worked at the factory and I've seen many examples of instruments that somewhat looked like Guild guitars but were obviously finished outside the Guild factory. Since most of these guitars didn't have a legitimate Guild serial number, it was obvious that they were not legitimate Guild guitars.
With the Crossroads it's a somewhat different situation because the model has a bolt-on neck.
Bolt-on necks were treated differently during production in that they were serial-numbered and lacquered before being attached to a guitar body. This makes it difficult to establish the amount of instruments that were actually produced. Guild kept track of the numbers that were stamped into the back of the headstocks of these necks but we do not know if these necks were actually put on a body and made into an actual guitar.
Since we've seen the leftover necks (with a serial number) and the bodies at the Guild plant, we can be sure that the number of Crossroads guitars that the 'official' Guild serial number list would suggest, have not been produced. Consequently it is possible that there are bolt-on neck guitars out there with a legitimate Guild serial number, but they are not necessarily legitimate Guilds.
When I look at the photo you posted and ignore the somewhat weird positioning (close to the butt end) of the stop tailpiece, I see a guitar that could be a nice solid body guitar.
But when you think about how it started, it may not function as well as you might think.
First of all, the Crossroads guitar was not a 'chambered' solid body; it was a completely hollowed out solid body with a thin maple top attached to it. Turning it into an electric guitar with a tune-o-matic type bridge and a stop- tailpiece is not something you can do without making the necessary changes to the inside of the guitar that would enable you to mount the hardware properly.

Of course it is possible that Guild would do an experiment with leftover parts but I believe that if Guild would try out something like this during this period, they would have used Guild pickups.
So, without seeing the instrument in the flesh I'm not sure what to think of it but I'm having a hard time believing that it is a legitimate Guild guitar.

So, we have to wait untill the actual guitar shows up, unless the 'maker' of this guitar makes himself known and confesses what he did to make this guitar work.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[matsickma]

Hi Hans,

Very interesting about the SN issue of bolt-on necks. I suspected this guitar may well be build from left over parts. I would have though HB-1 or DeArmond pups a better selection. I was pleasntly suprised to stumble on to the old ebay file for this guitar and figured this was the best place to archieve the info. (I proceeded to spend an additional hour looking for records of the hollow body SF5 I saw years back but to no avail. I did find a file of a weird white solid body prototype.) I can see my memory of this guitar was a little clouded because when I first reported it I suggested it had a harp stop. Having owned two Crossroads and being familiar with the internal construction I must have rationalized the harp and not hard stop.

After seeing the picture of "hide glues" basement with the two blank Crossroad bodies on his work bench I figured other ex-Westerly artisans may have blanks lying aroud.

M