kpsta
Junior Member
Hey there, everyone. I apologize in advance if this has a Penthouse Letters sound to it... 
I'm fairly new to LTG, but I've been playing far more than posting as of late. I'm from Houston - and an upright bassist by training for the past 20 years, but I started playing electric guitar about 8 years ago. I was always a Rickenbacker devotee and I have a great Burgandy 360 that has been my main guitar for a while. I also have a sunburst Gibson Custom Shop NR Firebird with P90s that I picked up earlier this year.
So why am I here? Prior to this summer, I'd never really played a Guild or even paid any attention to them. I had been vaguely looking at the old Epiphones (Coronets, Wilshires, & Crestwoods), but finding a 12-string has been at the top of the list for a while. Aside from a Rick 660-12 though, no other 12-string Rick has been comfortable to play (for me, big upright bass player hands + tiny cramped necks = not playing chords below about the 3rd fret). Unfortunately though, I'd never really liked the sound of the solid body Ricks - just too thin-sounding. I found the same thing with Fender XIIs and the few Firebird XIIs and Wilshire XIIs I've come across. There's even a Gibson 335-12 in my local guitar store, but it just didn't cut it.
Back in June, I was in Chicago on a business trip back and I wandered into the Chicago Music Exchange. It's about 3 times the size of the stores I have access to locally, and I promptly began drooling. It took me about an hour of walking before I came across my new favorite guitar: a 1966 Guild Starfire XII
It was just hanging on the bottom row surrounded by other semi-hollowbodies. Just amazing grain on the mahogany...
Picking it up the first time just made the hair on my neck stand up. I sat on the couch... went through all those cowboy chords that give me trouble on other 12-strings... no buzzing, in-tune, no fat-fingered mis-frettings. And it had this crazy, almost harsh-sounding, but still rich texture to everything I played. It almost sounded like I was plugged into an amp with a bit of overdrive, but there was no amp within 20 feet.
I took it back to one of the amp rooms and kinda saw the guys behind the counter laughing a little. I must have looked a bit awestruck. I plugged it into the nearest AC-30 - no pedals, left the reverb & trem off, and dialed in my normal, bedroom volume Rick settings. Wow. Immediately, I could tell it was a totally different kind of instrument from any 12-string I've ever played. So many different sounds came out of it based on how I adjusted the knobs... and all of them were amazing. That happens so rarely with any guitar, let alone a 12-string.
Long story long, I talked them down on the price ($3,600 was pretty steep) had her shipped back to Texas the next day. Shipping it home instead of taking it with me cut out the absurd ~10% tax, so that was nice. As it turns out, a prior owner was from the Dallas area (as the old tattered business card and Dallas arena-rock style VIP pass stickers on the beat up case would indicate). Yay, this baby's back in Texas where she belongs.
I haven't been on LTG though because I have been playing it so much. Here she is at home with my AC-30CC1:
I kind of wish the pickguard was there for the sake of being original, and I have absolutely no idea if everything else is original - but frankly, it sounds so amazing, that I just don't care.
I do have a question though... anyone have any idea what color this is? There's clearly some yellowing from all the cigarette smoke, but I can't tell if the original color was natural, amber, brown, or red. I guess it's possible that it's been refinished at some point, but I kind of doubt it.
I'm fairly new to LTG, but I've been playing far more than posting as of late. I'm from Houston - and an upright bassist by training for the past 20 years, but I started playing electric guitar about 8 years ago. I was always a Rickenbacker devotee and I have a great Burgandy 360 that has been my main guitar for a while. I also have a sunburst Gibson Custom Shop NR Firebird with P90s that I picked up earlier this year.
So why am I here? Prior to this summer, I'd never really played a Guild or even paid any attention to them. I had been vaguely looking at the old Epiphones (Coronets, Wilshires, & Crestwoods), but finding a 12-string has been at the top of the list for a while. Aside from a Rick 660-12 though, no other 12-string Rick has been comfortable to play (for me, big upright bass player hands + tiny cramped necks = not playing chords below about the 3rd fret). Unfortunately though, I'd never really liked the sound of the solid body Ricks - just too thin-sounding. I found the same thing with Fender XIIs and the few Firebird XIIs and Wilshire XIIs I've come across. There's even a Gibson 335-12 in my local guitar store, but it just didn't cut it.
Back in June, I was in Chicago on a business trip back and I wandered into the Chicago Music Exchange. It's about 3 times the size of the stores I have access to locally, and I promptly began drooling. It took me about an hour of walking before I came across my new favorite guitar: a 1966 Guild Starfire XII
It was just hanging on the bottom row surrounded by other semi-hollowbodies. Just amazing grain on the mahogany...
Picking it up the first time just made the hair on my neck stand up. I sat on the couch... went through all those cowboy chords that give me trouble on other 12-strings... no buzzing, in-tune, no fat-fingered mis-frettings. And it had this crazy, almost harsh-sounding, but still rich texture to everything I played. It almost sounded like I was plugged into an amp with a bit of overdrive, but there was no amp within 20 feet.
I took it back to one of the amp rooms and kinda saw the guys behind the counter laughing a little. I must have looked a bit awestruck. I plugged it into the nearest AC-30 - no pedals, left the reverb & trem off, and dialed in my normal, bedroom volume Rick settings. Wow. Immediately, I could tell it was a totally different kind of instrument from any 12-string I've ever played. So many different sounds came out of it based on how I adjusted the knobs... and all of them were amazing. That happens so rarely with any guitar, let alone a 12-string.
Long story long, I talked them down on the price ($3,600 was pretty steep) had her shipped back to Texas the next day. Shipping it home instead of taking it with me cut out the absurd ~10% tax, so that was nice. As it turns out, a prior owner was from the Dallas area (as the old tattered business card and Dallas arena-rock style VIP pass stickers on the beat up case would indicate). Yay, this baby's back in Texas where she belongs.
I haven't been on LTG though because I have been playing it so much. Here she is at home with my AC-30CC1:
I kind of wish the pickguard was there for the sake of being original, and I have absolutely no idea if everything else is original - but frankly, it sounds so amazing, that I just don't care.
I do have a question though... anyone have any idea what color this is? There's clearly some yellowing from all the cigarette smoke, but I can't tell if the original color was natural, amber, brown, or red. I guess it's possible that it's been refinished at some point, but I kind of doubt it.
