NGD Long awaited S100, surprises, drama, realizations, pics, flaming tiger hog

Guildedagain

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Cause people are stupid.

One day you figure it out.

They told Willie he sucked, for years, he didn't have the Nashville sound, which was quite bad actually.

I believe the S-100 got the axe in 1978, not the 80's.

Guild brought it back in 1994 after demi god of Grunge Kim Thayill manipulates one quite well in several videos, and then it dies out again by the year 2000.

Brought back in 2013 as Korean manufacture.


PS A big shoutout to the folks at LTG who did this, I love the reading material ;]
 

Guildedagain

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Snapshots in time!

People talking a future that is the past now ;]

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Guildedagain

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Amazing, interview with Kim Thayill I've never read, and the instant takeway from it is that it's an excellent guitar for detuning, because of the tuning stability which I've already experienced, a couple open tunings, you can go back and forth in seconds. With a Strat you'll be at it for minutes while the trem acclimatizes to the change.

Someone was asking about tonal differences between a Strat and an S-100, is it worth getting one if you already have a Strat with Rosewood board.

It's a lot more than any tonal differences.

He pretty much created grunge with that guitar.

"An 18-year-old Kim Thayil bought his first Guild S-100 at a Chicago music store in 1978, choosing it because it was fairly light and cheap ($250) and clearly a step up from his main axe at the time, an Encore Strat copy. The young guitarist didn't know it, of course, but his relatively casual decision led indirectly to the birth of grunge.

"I pretty much developed my style around how that guitar played," Thayil recalls. "It turned out to lend itself really well to detuning, and to play well below the bridge, which became an important part of my sound -- I get a ghostly effect by striking the low E down there.

"I used that S-100 through the early years of Soundgarden. It survived a lot of thrashings, but I finally broke it in 1990 in Denver. I threw it on the ground and the wood around the nut got crushed. Our next stop was Lawrence, Kansas, where we found a luthier and took in my guitar, along with one of Chris [Cornell]'s and Jason Everman's bass -- they had also gotten smashed in the same week. The guy looked at my nut and said with disgust, 'I can't fix this! What is it with you people from Seattle? Last week, I had a band called Nirvana in here with their broken guitars. Don't you people have any respect for your instruments?' We were like, "F*** you.' We weren't trying to break guitars, but we play with a lot of passion and energy and anger and joy, and we didn't really worry about it.

"But I was seriously bummed out -- it was my favorite guitar and I didn't know how to replace it. Then a friend said that he had a guitar just like it in his closet and I could have it. It was disassembled -- a bond and a neck and a bag full of hardware -- so I took it to Steven's Strings in Seattle where they put it together and painted it white. This is it, and it's been my main guitar ever since.

"It was pretty much the only guitar on Badmotorfinger [A&M, 1991] and I used it a lot on the next two, as well [Superunknown (A&M, 1994) and Down on the Upside (A&M, 1996)]. I don't take it on tour anymore because I want to preserve it, so I use new Guilds. Actually, the S-100 was out of production for a long time. Believe it or not, they put it back in production after a cover story of me in Guitar World [June '93], because they got so many calls asking for it. They told me that I single-handedly resurrected that guitar, with an assist from Guitar World. Now, that's a weird thought."
 

Guildedagain

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And this;


'74 S-100C:

Nut: 1 10/16 "
5th: 1 13/16 "
12th: 2 " (even)
22nd: 2 1/8

'96 S-100:

Nut: 1 11/16 "
5th: 1 14/16 "
12th: 2 1/16 "
22nd: 2 1/4

I left most of the measurements in 16th's instead of simplifying so you can see how little they differ. Basically, it's 1/16th difference all the way up and down.

However, playing the two: the neck definitely feels slimmer on the '74, and a bit chunkier on the '96. Quite a difference for such little measurements.

Of course the nuts/bridges/saddles etc. are different, but the low E on the '96 is about 1/16 " further in from the edge of the fretboard than the '74, probably adding to the "chunkier" feel.

The headstock on the '96 is slightly longer and wider and the upper points fan out a little more. Gives the appearance of being bigger/fatter.

Overall, the '74 seems a bit slimmer and slightly more elongated.

The '96's tunematic bridge has slightly more string angle so it feels like the strings are tighter. More down pressure I guess."


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Aha! There is a noticeable playing difference between these two guitars, and by the same token, there's a noticeable playing difference, I can barely type because the guitar won't let me, but it's limper than an SG because of the long flat shallow string angle, I love it.


Maybe limp is a bad word. It plays softer than an SG, or LP. Soft is good ;]

This, combined with slick GHS Brite Flats, and it plays very very well.

It also has a fairly shallow neck angle, again, less tension, and less likelihood of breakage.

The neck angle is shallower than the SF-4. which has less angle than a old school 335.
 
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GuildedCage

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Here is a Rig Rundown with Kim's tech and Kim himself. He talks about everything he loves about the S-100 and his S-300. He is one of the few that is loyal to these wicked guitars.
 

Rambozo96

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Why is it that I always thought the full bodied pickguard on a Gibson SG looked super dumb but I GAS hard for a S-90?
 

Rambozo96

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Cause people are stupid.

One day you figure it out.

They told Willie he sucked, for years, he didn't have the Nashville sound, which was quite bad actually.

I believe the S-100 got the axe in 1978, not the 80's.

Guild brought it back in 1994 after demi god of Grunge Kim Thayill manipulates one quite well in several videos, and then it dies out again by the year 2000.

Brought back in 2013 as Korean manufacture.


PS A big shoutout to the folks at LTG who did this, I love the reading material ;]
I hung around enough forums and players to get a feeling of a mob mindset that permeates (I say as I bought a Gretsch because of Malcom Young.). I understand it in a sense because back in the golden age of guitars if you wanted a pro grade guitar you probably had to buy a Gibson, Martin, Fender, Ric, Gretsch, etc. but these days (and as we experienced even a Guild equivalent of the days of old.) theres plenty of options. You don’t have to plunk a month or twos wages on a decent or even pro grade guitar. I experienced the mob mindset when searching for a proper replacement for my aging Yamaha FG-150 that developed higher action after 13 years of continuous use, tried every acoustic I could find and noticed that those old Guilds play and sound very good and box well above their weightclass as far as price went. Now I own some 5 Guilds and it still blows my mind people buy junk Harmony’s, mod them and fix them up in hopes of having a good sleeper guitar. I mean yes they were all solid woods so you have good bones but they were constructed rather poorly at times with some reports of the neck angles being bad from the factory. In my way of thinking why do that when you could get a nice Guild that was put together right the first time?
 

Guildedagain

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Those old Harmony's weren't really that great a players, but guys like Dan Auerbach sure made the prices take off.

I do like the S90 also, cool PG, simple, two knobs, probably light.

Mob mentality. I still have memories of getting treated like a leper for playing an SG Jr. with P90 back when Eddie burst onto the scene. I saw a lot of vintage Gibsons and priceless old Strats getting routed out for a Floyd...

Not sure where all the Guilds were hiding back then. Everybody was playing the same thing, Les Pauls and Strats mainly.
 

Rambozo96

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Those old Harmony's weren't really that great a players, but guys like Dan Auerbach sure made the prices take off.

I do like the S90 also, cool PG, simple, two knobs, probably light.

Mob mentality. I still have memories of getting treated like a leper for playing an SG Jr. with P90 back when Eddie burst onto the scene. I saw a lot of vintage Gibsons and priceless old Strats getting routed out for a Floyd...

Not sure where all the Guilds were hiding back then. Everybody was playing the same thing, Les Pauls and Strats mainly.
About 10 years ago I caught flak for using Peavey amps. But I knew something was special about the VTM and Butcher heads, I’ll admit some Peavey stuff tube gear included could be hit or miss as far as tone goes. If you use your ears, keep an open mind you’ll find lots of equipment from yesteryear you can get for peanuts and get a good tone from. These days I play a plywood Guyatone Mosrite on acid inspired job into a hybrid amp with a plastic housed Yamaha overdrive that’s a tubescreamer style circuit with a better tone circuit IMO (lots of 80’s OD’s had a TS inspired circuit.)
 

Guildedagain

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Old Peavey amps rule. Good stuff, go far enough back, they had some tube amps, VTX series I think.

Some of the best steel guitar amps were Peaveys.

For a year, I played through a 12V powered Gorilla and had absolutely stellar tone.
 

fronobulax

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"mob mentality"

I bought my first "decent" bass, a Guild, precisely because "the mob" was playing Fenders and an occasional rogue Gibson. My first commercial amp was an Ovation 1x15 combo with a matched 1x15 cabinet. I sold it for reasons that still don't make sense but replaced it with a Peavey head and 2x15 cabinet. You'd think if the mob turned left then I would always turn right.
 
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