NGD: 1997 Bluesbird

[Guilderland21]

I'm happy to say that I bought the Bluesbird discussed here today, and it's great! I walked into Mill River Music yesterday thinking that I probably wanted a Les Paul, but wanting to take the opportunity to try a Bluesbird and Blues 90 side by side; I walked out half an hour later thoroughly won over by the Bluesbird, and after sleeping on it, I came back to buy it this afternoon.

SN is CL000267, which I think works out to 1997. It seems to be in pretty good shape other than binding cracks, a crack in the neck pickup ring, and some normal dings and scratches (most notably a gouge in the bass side lower bout and wear on the back edge of the headstock). The pickups are apparently Seymour Duncan 59s, and I wonder if that's part of why I liked it more than expected - I'd thought for a while that the Bluesbird seemed like a very cool model but hadn't loved the sound in the demos I'd heard. In addition to sounding great, it plays pretty comfortably (under 8 lbs, which is nice; I wish the neck were a little chunkier when playing barre chords, but it's no worse than my dread and I've lived with that for the last few years) and seems to be set up nicely.

And the transparent red finish looks great!

 

[Rocky]

Congrats! Nice looking guitar.

 

[GAD]

Nice! Looks just like the one ai reviewed here:

1997 Guild Bluesbird Guitar | GAD's Ramblings

Today’s review is for a 1997 Guild Bluesbird guitar from the Westerly factory that I picked up on eBay for a great price. I didn’t need it, but it was so pretty that I couldn’t resist. Sadly, that happens to me a lot. The Guild bluesbird of this era is quite clearly inspired by the …

www.gad.net

Fabulous guitars. Enjoy it!

 

[mushroom]

Yeah these are great.
Enjoy.

 

[GGJaguar]

Excellent, congrats!

 

[HeyMikey]

Congrats Guilder! That’s some nice looking tiger maple under the transparent red. I’d imagine those SD 59’s sound really good with it.

 

[Rickenmaxer]

Beautiful! I love the understated elegance of that wine-red top.

 

[walrus]

Congratulations! I love the Bluesbird neck - you might be the first person I've heard say that the neck could be chunkier!

 

[GAD]

Congratulations! I love the Bluesbird neck - you might be the first person I've heard say that the neck could be chunkier!

And they got chunkier in the early 2000s.

 

[Smitch]

Congrats! It’s an under appreciated killer axe!

 

[chazmo]

Wonderful! Congrats, Guilderland!

 

[Guilderland21]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

A couple of things I'm wondering about at this point:
- The neck pickup mounting ring is cracked through just below the high e string, as shown below. Is it reasonable for me to remove the screws on the pickup and ring, lift it out, and superglue it? Other suggestions?
- What would the stock pickups on this guitar have been? I'm not interested in changing what's there, which I believe to be SD 59s, just curious and saw a couple of old posts here that left me uncertain.

 

[GAD]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

A couple of things I'm wondering about at this point:
- The neck pickup mounting ring is cracked through just below the high e string, as shown below. Is it reasonable for me to remove the screws on the pickup and ring, lift it out, and superglue it? Other suggestions?
- What would the stock pickups on this guitar have been? I'm not interested in changing what's there, which I believe to be SD 59s, just curious and saw a couple of old posts here that left me uncertain.

Very common to have the rings cracked like that and I've superglued a few. Keep the glue away from the guitar (even if just putting a towel over the guitar if you don't want to remove the pickup from the ring) and you'll be fine. If you do remove the pickup you'll need to readjust the height (and possibly tilt) when re-installing.

The pickups in a '97 Bluesbird should be SD '59s. Pics of what you should see in this article.

 

[Guilblues]

Your guitar looks very nice! I love the wood pattern under the paint. It's a very shiny guitar too. A bit like mine. Are the solid Guilds painted with polyurethane too?

 

[GAD]

Your guitar looks very nice! I love the wood pattern under the paint. It's a very shiny guitar too. A bit like mine. Are the solid Guilds painted with polyurethane too?

Depends on the model and the year.

 

[Guilblues]

Depends on the model and the year.

Interesting. Which ones are? So it's the same as with the Starfires?

 

[Guilderland21]

Very common to have the rings cracked like that and I've superglued a few. Keep the glue away from the guitar (even if just putting a towel over the guitar if you don't want to remove the pickup from the ring) and you'll be fine. If you do remove the pickup you'll need to readjust the height (and possibly tilt) when re-installing.

The pickups in a '97 Bluesbird should be SD '59s. Pics of what you should see in this article.

Thanks for the information - I'm sure I'd read that review of yours at some point but not too recently.

The pickups were described as late 80s-early 90s SD 59s; the guy at the store seemed to think this was an upgrade, but now I suspect they are original and (assuming they've been accurately dated) the parts were just a few years old when used in 1997. No complaints here, though - I didn't pay a premium for the pickups in any case, though when I thought they'd been changed I wondered if that was why the guitar sounded so good.

If and when I remove the pickups I'll take some pictures for reference, but for now, as installed, they look very similar (in the configuration of screws on the ring, for starters) to the ones in your review. Might try to superglue the ring without removing the pickup if I can get something under/around it to keep glue off the guitar top.

 

[Boneman]

HNGD! Man Guild does red right, congrats on a killer axe!

 

[Guilderland21]

I was able to superglue the ring. When putting the glue on I was so concerned about keeping it from getting on the top that I didn't hold the cracked piece in place right away, and as a result (the glue set very quickly), it's offset vertically by a couple of millimeters where the crack was. The perfectionist in me is unhappy, but not enough to keep messing with it and risk making things worse - you have to look closely to see it that it isn't flush, and at least I'm no longer concerned about part of the ring breaking off.

 

[golfnut]

Congrats on the guitar. Did you compare it to an LP standard?