X160 savoy sounds thin.

georgerarnold

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Hello,

I’m looking for some advice.

My girlfriend has a guild x160 savoy in blond from the early 90s.
It’s a great guitar to play. Slightly shorter scale which really suits me, feels great and sounds good acoustically.
Unfortunately the electric sound is thin and lacking low end which is a real shame for this guitar which I feel has a lot of potential.

It has the guild mini humbuckers I believe which are a well renowned pickup. So my question to you experts is what could be causing this thin sound?
Could the pickups be bad or is the anything else in the electronics which might cause this? Are there any capacitors which might need replacing or worn out pots?

I’m living in a German backwater and wouldn’t know where to find a decent guitar tech here who would understand me so I’d like to try to tackle the problem myself.

Very grateful for any advice.

Thanks.
 

krysh

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Moin from Hamburg,
A regular 1990 X-160 should have the wider HB-1s and not the little buckers that went off production around 1971. pictures and the serial no. would help to find out what the problem might be.
 

Rocky

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Poorly adjusted pickup/polepiece heights could also thin out the sound. Another possibility is the wrong kind of strings on the guitar. Despite it being a hollow guitar, it needs electric-style strings to amplify properly. But I agree with Walter, the best thing is to get it in the hands of a pro who can sort it out. Failing that, some photos could go a long way towards identifying the issue.
 

georgerarnold

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Moin from Hamburg,
A regular 1990 X-160 should have the wider HB-1s and not the little buckers that went off production around 1971. pictures and the serial no. would help to find out what the problem might be.
Yes that’s right the hb-1s are what it has. Apologies about that. Serial is hj000208.
Perhaps they are supposed to sound like that but everyone who plays it loves it until they plug it in.
 

georgerarnold

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Pots or caps seems unlikely. What string gauge do you have on the guitar? What do you plug it into? I'd say take it to a good tech for a good setup, shouldn't be all too hard to find in Germany.
I’ve plugged it into many amps (63 vox ac15 twin, session 15/30 (normally very bassy), 61 Gibson ga19rvt, bassman 90s reissue). It doesn’t sound as good as I think it should in any of them.
 

georgerarnold

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Poorly adjusted pickup/polepiece heights could also thin out the sound. Another possibility is the wrong kind of strings on the guitar. Despite it being a hollow guitar, it needs electric-style strings to amplify properly. But I agree with Walter, the best thing is to get it in the hands of a pro who can sort it out. Failing that, some photos could go a long way towards identifying the issue.
Could be the strings but they look and feel like any kind of electric string I’ve used before.
my experience with any kind of service industry in this town has been negative so I’m reluctant to trust this lovely guitar to anyone around here.
 

georgerarnold

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P.s. the pickup height looks fine to me. Couldn’t realistically get them any closer.
 

georgerarnold

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7EB9A0E4-23A3-4DD4-82F5-6D357823CF87.jpeg
 

AcornHouse

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Check the ground wire solder joints. I thought something was wrong with my bridge pup in my S-275. It was a cold solder joint (non-factory) on the pots.
 

GAD

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Pickups too high is worse than pickups too low IMO. Can you post a pic of the pickups from the side so we can see how close they are?

Those pickups in that guitar should sound amazing. Starting with pickup height because that’s the simplest to resolve.

If it’s electronics then things get more complicated.
 

Rocky

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Pickups too high is worse than pickups too low IMO.
Yep, too high and they get a kind of spiky brightness. Too low and they sound dull. When I adjust them, I usually start with them flush with the mounting rings, or about 1.5 cm from the strings. I play, raise them 1/2 - 1 turn of the screw, and see if it sounds better. Once you find the sweet spot, you can then do coarse string balancing with the mounting screws, and fine tuning with the polepieces. Time consuming, but you'll rarely need to touch them again.
 

Norrissey

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Not sure if this has been mentioned but do you have round wound or flat wound strings on the guitar? I prefer flat wound strings on my '75 Starfire II that has HB-1 pickups. The tone is warmer and fuller with the flat wounds.
 

Walter Broes

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Hard to say from that diagonal angle, doesn't look extreme either way. I vaguely get the impression your neck pickup might be adjusted a little high up in that ring - is it louder than the bridge pickup?
 

GAD

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Hard to tell from the angle but they look high to me.
 

jp

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Hard to tell from the angle but they look high to me.
I think so too. Actually, from that angle, the action also looks pretty high, and your bridge seems to have bottomed out in adjustment.

Unless you like the action that high (if it actually is), I would suggest lowering the pickups all the way, and then sanding down the bridge base as well as the undersides of the bridge below the thumbwheels. This will allow you some room to lower the bridge to get lower action. Then experiment with raising the pickups slowly to balance your sound.

If you don't want to mess with this, it shouldn't cost much for a competent luthier to do this for you.
 
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GAD

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I think so too. Actually, from that angle, the action also looks pretty high, and your bridge seems to have bottomed out in adjustment.

Unless you like the action that high (if it actually is), I would suggest lowering the pickups all the way, and then sanding down the bridge base as well as the undersides of the bridge below the thumbwheels. This will allow you some room to lower it the bridge to get lower action. Then experiment with raising the pickups slowly to balance your sound.

If you don't want to mess with this, it shouldn't cost much for a competent luthier to do this for you.

Hmm, yeah. Action looks high, bridge is bottomed out, and I bet someone raised the pickups to try and compensate for that.

That guitar might need some more professional love - if not now, then soon.
 

BradHK

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Hard to tell from the angle but they look high to me.
Agree. It looks like the strings would hit, or be really close, to the neck pickup if you fretted the strings higher up the fretboard. It almost looks like the neck pickup is sitting higher than the fretboard but that could just be the angle of the photo.
 
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