Stuart Day's Review of the Aristocrat HH (Trans Black)

[PittPastor]

Stuart Day, acclaimed luthier from New Galilee, PA, reviews the Guild Aristocrat HH (Trans Black)

Spoiler alert -- he likes it, saying "This is a great guitar, man, for the price point I don't think you're going to find a better fit and finish, to be honest..."



And, yes, this is my Aristocrat. I took it to him because the 3rd and 5th frets were high causing intonation issues. In some of the B-Roll, you can see all he did as part of his setup. Pretty impressive. (And, keep in mind, that this guitar came from Sweetwater AFTER they had done their 55 Point inspection AND an extra Setup that was supposedly valued at $75)

 

[Westerly Wood]

so dont buy from sweetwater then? 55 pt inspection. i always figured that was marketing...

 

[SFIV1967]

I like how he is preparing the fretboard and the pickups for the fret dressing, very protective and careful! A great person!

Ralf

 

[PittPastor]

so dont buy from sweetwater then? 55 pt inspection. i always figured that was marketing...

Opinions vary I guess. Some of the guys on here swear by them. My experience has been very mixed.

I will say, my new rep is better. But, still honestly I'd rather buy from Guitar Center, if I can, since I can play it first and their return policy is second to none.

Sweetwater tries to make that up with their 55 point inspection, but it's not as good for me as my 55 minute in person inspection.

That being said... Sweetwater had this guitar and Guitar Center didn't. So, there is that in their favor.

In this case, I bought it and it was not setup right at all. Terrible buzzing. String hitting the pickup. And frets three and five were high. I complained, the rep I had at the time tried to handle me... Trying to make me believe that I just didn't understand how guitars work, and wanted me to call tech support instead of taking it back... I escalated it. Someone higher up apologized and they suggested I get a new rep. Andrew is much better.

He not only arranged for them to switch and give me a new guitar, picking up all shipping costs both ways, he also threw in a free setup.

But the new guitar still came to me with the switch not working in the middle position, and frets three and five high. (That must be a Guild China issue. Too much of a coincidence...)

So... I guess opinions on Sweetwater vary, but I'm not too terribly impressed. I think they want to be better than they are. But they deal in too high a volume.

YMMV

 

[cupric]

Unless the issues were created by Sweetwater, the issues are with Guild. It seems that their oversight on imports are lacking. I've heard several instances of this from buyers.
These are not inexpensive instruments. They are at the same price point as other manufacturers. At a higher price point than many other, famous, imported lines. But to compare Apple's to Apple's we can reference PRS. Their SE line of instruments from China feature high end appointments, wooden bindings, high end hardware. The finish is excellent. And they usually get excellent reviews out of the box. Fender has many import models that are priced below the Guilds and they are often excellent on receipt.

 

[PittPastor]

Unless the issues were created by Sweetwater, the issues are with Guild. It seems that their oversight on imports are lacking. I've heard several instances of this from buyers.
These are not inexpensive instruments. They are at the same price point as other manufacturers.

Well I would say yes and no on that. If you're going to claim you're doing a 55 point inspection, then something like a buzz on a pickup may have been the manufacturer's fault, but it should be caught in your inspection, and then either fixed, or that guitar should not ship.

I would also say that I have picked up many a guitar off the wall at Guitar Center and found things that should have been discovered before the guitar was ever put up. But they don't specifically market their great inspection program...

Having tone knobs or volume knobs that don't work is quite common in the imports. IDK about PRS, but I have seen it on Epiphone, Gibson, Ibanez, and Gretsch. And always on the imports.

However, having frets come out high exactly the same in two guitars, seems to indicate it's a manufacturing problem for Guild in China.

My somewhat limited experience with buying Guild guitars is:

MIA > MIK > MIC > MIM

 

[SFIV1967]

... seems to indicate it's a manufacturing problem for Guild in China.

The Aristocrat HH in question is made at Yako in China. The extra interesting things is that Guild claims to inspect every Newark St. model in Oxnard before it ships and we have seen pictures of thousand of such guitars standing unpacked and ready for inspection there. Nevertheless guitars arrived with issues at buyers. What I don't know is when exactly they started those inspections, could have been just after such things popped up in the field. But they seem to do it on all models now, so I'd say, quality should get better.

Ralf

 

[PittPastor]

The Aristocrat HH in question is made at Yako in China. The extra interesting things is that Guild claims to inspect every Newark St. model in Oxnard before it ships and we have seen pictures of thousand of such guitars standing unpacked and ready for inspection there. Nevertheless guitars arrived with issues at buyers. What I don't know is when exactly they started those inspections, could have been just after such things popped up in the field. But they seem to do it on all models now, so I'd say, quality should get better.

Ralf

What does "inspection" mean though? Sweetwater put this guitar through it's legendary 55 Point Inspection, and it still shipped with high frets and a switch that did not work correctly.

If you simply look at fit and finish, the guitar was great. If you put a straight edge on each fret and check for a rock (as you see Stuart do in the video when he is checking it) it would have failed.

Does inspection mean plugging it in, playing it in each switch position, and then checking for intonation and buzzing? Because I would think a person who knows what they are doing would have caught the issues if they did all of that. If you are just checking for cracked pick guards, broken binding, bent knobs, action height -- things that can be checked without ever plugging it in... then they wouldn't have caught any of it.

Of course, you would think that a company with the slogan of "Made to be Played" would plug it in and check the playability...

 

[SFIV1967]

What does "inspection" mean though?

Guild QC Manager Pics

The Manager of QC for Guild just posted these on Facebook [Oct 2020 Edit - added attachments to fix briken pic links]

letstalkguild.com

QC MGR posted these on FB

He said, "Just arrived from the factory today and running them through QC and Setup"

letstalkguild.com

Ralf

 

[fronobulax]

@SFIV1967 pretty much said what I was going to. Guild's solution was to do some kind of inspection in Oxnard before instruments go to dealers and that was a response to dealers who pretty much let the customer be the next person to open the box since it left the factory.

I am somewhat cynical about "x point inspections". We had a Certified Pre-Owned vehicle that was inspected by the dealer and had passed the manufacturer's 155 point inspection. It is my, now unprovable, belief (and my mechanic's) that the car had been in a flood and the flood damage either never generated an insurance claim or records were falsified and an insurance totaled vehicle was retitled. In any even the inspection was passed. I was annoyed enough to actually look at a list of the 155 points and it is not clear that the inspection would have caught the problems we eventually had. In the future if the presence of a "point inspection" effects my choice of product or vendor I am much more likely to actually ask what is being looked for than assume the inspection is actually protecting me.

That said, the QC inspections at the factory and in Oxnard before the dealer might not be catching everything they should if the instrument in question is recent enough that it went through the process.

 

[DrumBob]

The Sweetwater 55 point check is BS, to put it mildly. I once bought a Gretsch Electromatic and was assured it would get the 55 point check, and it was never even removed from the triangular inner box it came with, so there was no checking before it left the warehouse. The "sales engineer" lied to me flat out. The guitar wouldn't stay in tune, even after a setup, so I sent it back and requested and got a new rep. My SF-IV came from Sweetwater, and this time, the guitar arrived in great shape.