NGD 1997 Starfire II

[drew]

1997 Guild Starfire II. Been working on trying to meet up to buy this guitar for weeks. Today was the day and it was everything I hoped it would be!

Not sure what it compares to really, I’ve had Gibson ES335, Mosrite Celebrity, several Gretsch guitars and even a Guild x-500t.

This one is different than all of them, I like it better than all the others except the X-500t but is substantially smaller than that full sized Jazz box so that makes up for it.

I’d love to hear others with experience with Starfire and how they think it stacks up against other guitars.

 

[Norrissey]

Congrats! That is a beautiful Starfire II. I'm a huge Starfire II fan, I have two of them, a '64 and a '75. Mine are very different from each other because they have different pickups and their bodies differ slightly but they are both killer. I play blues and rock on them. As you'd expect the '64 has a vintage '60s Chuck Berry sound (I bought it with Gibson patent number pickups on it, I've got the original pickups and will eventually put them back on just haven't got around to it yet, partly because the Gibsons sound amazing)) The '75 has HB-1 pickups with a thicker cleaner wonderful sound. Weirdly the guitar I have that is probably most similar to yours is my '97 X-170, like your Starfire II it has SD-1 pickups which are super nice versatile pickups, great for anything from jazz to rock. The build quality of the Westerly factory in '97 was outstanding so I'm sure that's the case with your guitar.

 

[walrus]

Nice! Great natural finish on that! Congratulations!

walrus

 

[drew]

Congrats! That is a beautiful Starfire II. I'm a huge Starfire II fan, I have two of them, a '64 and a '75. Mine are very different from each other because they have different pickups and their bodies differ slightly but they are both killer. I play blues and rock on them. As you'd expect the '64 has a vintage '60s Chuck Berry sound (I bought it with Gibson patent number pickups on it, I've got the original pickups and will eventually put them back on just haven't got around to it yet, partly because the Gibsons sound amazing)) The '75 has HB-1 pickups with a thicker cleaner wonderful sound. Weirdly the guitar I have that is probably most similar to yours is my '97 X-170, like your Starfire II it has SD-1 pickups which are super nice versatile pickups, great for anything from jazz to rock. The build quality of the Westerly factory in '97 was outstanding so I'm sure that's the case with your guitar.

Build quality is, as expected, outstanding.

I was talking to my brother about the fact that I've picked up three Guilds in the past couple of weeks and each one of them has been added to my "keeper" list along with my D25 2003 D25, I just got a 1988 D15M and a 1975 D40C and then today just got this Starfire. I told him that Guilds have an easier path to the keeper list, not just because they are all phenomenal instruments but because they are almost criminally affordable.

I've had top of the line Gibson, Martin and Taylor acoustics and they aren't better than my lowest end D15M or even the D4HG I've had. So cost to quality ratio the Guilds are always top of the pile!

I'm trying to find the right guitar to compare the Starfire to, it isn't really an ES335, maybe an ES-135?

 

[GGJaguar]

Beautiful! You did good with that one, congrats!! Looks just like mine.

 

[HeyMikey]

Congrats drew. That one looks to be in really nice shape. Have you had a chance to plug it in yet. I bet it sounds amazing with the SD1’s !

 

[spoox]

Love my fingerprint magnet '97...

 

[Norrissey]

Here's my '75 Starfire II. Love this guitar.

 

[drew]

Congrats drew. That one looks to be in really nice shape. Have you had a chance to plug it in yet. I bet it sounds amazing with the SD1’s !

I have and it is everything I hoped it would be. Also, mint condition. Hadn’t been out of its case in 15 years.