M-75 Aristocrat Newark St.

Stefan Eff

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64488FFC-F6D0-4DAA-8CFB-4356F68F05D2.jpeg

So good!
The Aristocrat sounds better every day.
Such a responsive and „breathing“ instrument. Honestly one of the best guitars I‘ve ever owned. And hey, one week ahead‘s her birthday- 7 years and she‘s been hardly played until I met her :)
 

Rockabilly_Nick

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Steffan eff, that is a beautiful guitar. I have the gold top as well and up to this point my way of dealing with the "brightness" of those franz pickups has been to use flatwounds and roll the treble way down on my amp. I'm not sure if you had an issue with it being too bright sounding or not or if that is what led you to experiment with various bridges. In your opinion do those nylon saddle help mellow the tone a bit? Also, did you source those knobs direct from Guild?
 

Stefan Eff

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Hi, thanks @Rockabilly_Nick !

No problem with brightness- I‘m playing pure nickel strings and roll down the tonepot on the bridge pkup a bit.
I‘ve also screwed the polepieces down on both pkups which tames the heights also! Yes, the nylon saddles are mellow and sweet sounding, they round the top end.

The knobs are available at the Guild shop. They‘re a tad smaller than the original 1950‘s knobs on the Aristocrat and you‘ll need to paint them inside with golden lacquer. Hope that helps!
If you need more information pm me!
 

Rockabilly_Nick

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There is a local guitar shop that I frequent called Dave's Guitar Shop. He's got his own collection of "not for sale" guitars up on the 2nd floor that anybody is welcome to gawk at. In his collection he's got a 58 Aristocrat, see link here: M-75, '58 - Dave's Guitar Shop
There is a pretty good write up on the history of Guild and of the Aristocrat itself. Have a look at the pic and you'll see how good of a job you did at making your gold top very historically accurate even down to the tuner buttons (though there is not much we can do about the "gibson" headstock.) When I bought my gold top I brought it in so I could look at them side by side and the new ones are very close in size, shape, and weight at least to this 1958 example. I'm curious if the original owner on this switched out a rosewood bridge for the TOM? Anybody know if the old aristocrats ever came stock with TOM's?
 

Stefan Eff

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There is a local guitar shop that I frequent called Dave's Guitar Shop. He's got his own collection of "not for sale" guitars up on the 2nd floor that anybody is welcome to gawk at. In his collection he's got a 58 Aristocrat, see link here: M-75, '58 - Dave's Guitar Shop
There is a pretty good write up on the history of Guild and of the Aristocrat itself. Have a look at the pic and you'll see how good of a job you did at making your gold top very historically accurate even down to the tuner buttons (though there is not much we can do about the "gibson" headstock.) When I bought my gold top I brought it in so I could look at them side by side and the new ones are very close in size, shape, and weight at least to this 1958 example. I'm curious if the original owner on this switched out a rosewood bridge for the TOM? Anybody know if the old aristocrats ever came stock with TOM's?

Thanks!
I see my Aristocrat more as an „antiqued“ interpretation of the old M-75, but I guess it‘s very close to the original tone, thanks to those great Franz pkup reissues! I personally couldn‘t be happier but it took me a while to tweak her that way. Tone and playability are amazing now and yes, it‘s even a very good guitar stock!

Afaik the late 50’s versions came stock with a TOM-bridge, but I could be wrong.
 

Walter Broes

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TOM bridges are originally strictly a Gibson part, the original M-75's always came with a wood saddle.

The only non-Gibson instruments that came with a tune-a-matic bridge were a very few National (Valco) guitars, as Gibson and Valco had the same parent company at the time.

Melita bridges were an option on Guild archtops, but they didn't show up on M-75's bc a Melita bridge is too tall to fit the geometry of those guitars.
 

Rockabilly_Nick

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Thanks for the clarification Walter. Another question, it looks like those TOM bridges have a 12" radius. How does that work with the aristocrat neck radius of 9.5"?
 

Stefan Eff

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Thanks for the clarification Walter. Another question, it looks like those TOM bridges have a 12" radius. How does that work with the aristocrat neck radius of 9.5"?

Not all. The (nevertheless cheap) TOM on my Manhattan had got a matching radius. You can file the notches to match the fretboard radius. Honestly, on my ~ 11“ radiused Faber I didn’t feel any disadvantages.
 

parker_knoll

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Thanks for the clarification Walter. Another question, it looks like those TOM bridges have a 12" radius. How does that work with the aristocrat neck radius of 9.5"?
12" radius is about right for a 9.5" fretboard. Bridge radius should be wider than fingerboard radius because the strings are higher than the fretboard, so imagine a circle with a centre some way below the guitar
 

Rockabilly_Nick

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So, it’s been a while. Any new updates or more recent opinions on the aristocrat in the last 9 months Stefan? I always like to hear how things go with new/remodeled guitars after the honeymoon period.
 
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