S-300A/ AD two part question (1 for Qvart, 1 for GAD)

1) Qvart, first of all, I want to express my appreciation for your S-100 devotion and research. Now for the question.

How did your S-300 A compare in sound to S-100? Did the difference body woods contribute largely to sound even if the pickups were the same HB1s?

2) GAD

Hi. I find my S-300AD neck pickup really muddy-sounding. I hardly ever use it. Is it the same with your S-300AD?

Russian Guy said:

1) Qvart, first of all, I want to express my appreciation for your S-100 devotion and research. Now for the question.

How did your S-300 A compare in sound to S-100? Did the difference body woods contribute largely to sound even if the pickups were the same HB1s?

2) GAD

Hi. I find my S-300AD neck pickup really muddy-sounding. I hardly ever use it. Is it the same with your S-300AD?

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Hmm. Not sure. I haven't played it in months. I never noticed that in the past. As soon as I'm near it again, I'll pull it out and let you know.

Russian Guy said:

1) Qvart, first of all, I want to express my appreciation for your S-100 devotion and research. Now for the question.

How did your S-300 A compare in sound to S-100? Did the difference body woods contribute largely to sound even if the pickups were the same HB1s?

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First, thanks. Good to know someone is benefiting from the sticky thread.

Second, the S300 is long gone, but I remember it being basically the same sound (because of the pickups), only slightly darker with more of a biting edge to the sound. No explanation other than the wood, I guess.

GAD said:

Hmm. Not sure. I haven't played it in months. I never noticed that in the past. As soon as I'm near it again, I'll pull it out and let you know.

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Looking forward to updates from you on that.

Qvart said:

First, thanks. Good to know someone is benefiting from the sticky thread.

Second, the S300 is long gone, but I remember it being basically the same sound (because of the pickups), only slightly darker with more of a biting edge to the sound. No explanation other than the wood, I guess.

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Thank you for the answer but just to clarify "darker" in this case meaning more modern sounding rather than vintage sounding as with mahogany Guilds?

Russian Guy said:

GAD said:

Hmm. Not sure. I haven't played it in months. I never noticed that in the past. As soon as I'm near it again, I'll pull it out and let you know.

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Looking forward to updates from you on that.

Qvart said:

First, thanks. Good to know someone is benefiting from the sticky thread.

Second, the S300 is long gone, but I remember it being basically the same sound (because of the pickups), only slightly darker with more of a biting edge to the sound. No explanation other than the wood, I guess.

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Thank you for the answer but just to clarify "darker" in this case meaning more modern sounding rather than vintage sounding as with mahogany Guilds?

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Slightly. Still sound pretty vintage. I remember being able to get a more "metal" sound out of it than the S-100. I don't remember it being a huge difference though.

Qvart said:

I remember being able to get a more "metal" sound out of it than the S-100.

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That's exactly what I was driving at. The thing is I'm trying to get more of a Page or Thayil vintage sound.

QVart's S300 had HB1s in it IIRC. Mine has Dimarzios...

I briefly had S-300s with both HB-1s (a '77 S-300 that I sold to Plague before I fell hard for HB-1s) and an '81 S300A-D with DiMarzios (which I recently sold in the midst of my herd-trimming efforts). I liked them both, but kept the S300A-D longer because it had more bite, and I liked the pickguardless look. Oh, but if I had to do it all over again, I think the fates of both guitars might have been different ...

Russian Guy said:

Qvart said:

I remember being able to get a more "metal" sound out of it than the S-100.

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That's exactly what I was driving at. The thing is I'm trying to get more of a Page or Thayil vintage sound.

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The S-100 does a good dark metal sound too. Check out The Sword sometime.

As for Thayil, he's the one known for playing S-100's, so if you like his sound I'd look into one of those. However, he has been spotted recently playing an S300.

Also, S-100's have 22 frets. S300's are 24-fret. Early S-100's have shallow neck sets/angles. Later S-100's and S300's have deeper neck sets and a sharper angle more like a Gibson. In short, it's not just the wood that's different, although you can get all-mahogany S300's too. I'll have to defer to TF and GAD on the issue of DiMarzio's. The only other pickups I've had in a Guild are the XR-7's (made by DiMarzio) and I like those as well, but nothing compares to the HB-1's for me.

What Qvart said!

GAD said:

QVart's S300 had HB1s in it IIRC. Mine has Dimarzios...

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I know. That's why addressed both of you guys. I also read the Qvart saga on the S-300A with discolored bottom.

Thunderface said:

I briefly had S-300s with both HB-1s (a '77 S-300 that I sold to Plague before I fell hard for HB-1s) and an '81 S300A-D with DiMarzios (which I recently sold in the midst of my herd-trimming efforts). I liked them both, but kept the S300A-D longer because it had more bite, and I liked the pickguardless look. Oh, but if I had to do it all over again, I think the fates of both guitars might have been different ...

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Those are real nice. Did the Dimarzio one not even have the holes for the pickguard? It was pickgardless from the beginning?

Qvart said:

The S-100 does a good dark metal sound too. Check out The Sword sometime.

As for Thayil, he's the one known for playing S-100's, so if you like his sound I'd look into one of those. However, he has been spotted recently playing an S300.

Also, S-100's have 22 frets. S300's are 24-fret. Early S-100's have shallow neck sets/angles. Later S-100's and S300's have deeper neck sets and a sharper angle more like a Gibson. In short, it's not just the wood that's different, although you can get all-mahogany S300's too. I'll have to defer to TF and GAD on the issue of DiMarzio's. The only other pickups I've had in a Guild are the XR-7's (made by DiMarzio) and I like those as well, but nothing compares to the HB-1's for me.

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I did when I was trying to find every single video of S-100/90 on youtube. But as fars as I can remember somebody said that it had different pickups (not HB1s).

I'm also into Soundgarden and on the recent tour he was seen playing S-300AD on a couple of songs. It's bad for all the S-300 admirers because it might result in the price increase like it did with S-100s. Plus the look of him with S-100 is just stuck in my head. It suits him better.

So S-100 is not that angled like on S-300. Thanks - I didn't know that.

I'll probably draw some flack for this, but I think almost all humbuckers sound muddy. Not only that, but typically, the hotter the pickup, the muddier the tone gets. DiMarzios being designed as high output replacement pickups to "hotrod" stock Les Pauls, etc. tend to sound especially dull to my ears.

Guild HB-1s and a couple low output aftermarket pickups (e.g. Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers) are the exception. While they don't have the snap and punch of a good singlecoil, HB1s and other "good" humbuckers do have a sparkling, "pretty" tone that can still be just as musical.

Personally, I'd really look for something w/ HB-1s in it; they're a fabulous pickup and part of what makes owning a Guild fun. There are a lot of solid slabs of mahogany/ash/etc. with a pair of DiMarzios in them, but much fewer slabs with HB-1s in them and, save for a few early BC Rich's, they're all Guilds.

I'm not a jazz player and rarely play completely clean, either. On the other hand, I almost never use pedals and sometimes have the amp set so it's only semi-distorting.

Russian Guy said:

Those are real nice. Did the Dimarzio one not even have the holes for the pickguard? It was pickgardless from the beginning?

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They dropped the pickguard in 1980. I think.

Russian Guy said:

So S-100 is not that angled like on S-300. Thanks - I didn't know that.

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Before 1975. After 1975 they had a steeper angle. Checkit.

kakerlak said:

I'll probably draw some flack for this, but I think almost all humbuckers sound muddy. Not only that, but typically, the hotter the pickup, the muddier the tone gets. DiMarzios being designed as high output replacement pickups to "hotrod" stock Les Pauls, etc. tend to sound especially dull to my ears.

Guild HB-1s and a couple low output aftermarket pickups (e.g. Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers) are the exception. While they don't have the snap and punch of a good singlecoil, HB1s and other "good" humbuckers do have a sparkling, "pretty" tone that can still be just as musical.

Personally, I'd really look for something w/ HB-1s in it; they're a fabulous pickup and part of what makes owning a Guild fun. There are a lot of solid slabs of mahogany/ash/etc. with a pair of DiMarzios in them, but much fewer slabs with HB-1s in them and, save for a few early BC Rich's, they're all Guilds.

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That's the thing, DiMarzio PAF in the neck position is so muddy that it overshadows the SuperDistortion when both pickups are selected which for me personally makes it pretty much unusable. Of course single-coils is whole another story but my Viper proves it all three combinations are more than usable and have character to each one.

I'll definitely try to get a Guild with HB1s in it. Although as years go by according to Treem they changed also i.e. from 1970-1972 they were smaller and had less output than those from 1973 and onward.

Qvart said:

They dropped the pickguard in 1980. I think.

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Always learning something new here. I love this board!

Qvart said:

Russian Guy said:

So S-100 is not that angled like on S-300. Thanks - I didn't know that.

Click to expand...

Before 1975. After 1975 they had a steeper angle. Checkit.

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Thanks. That's is a real good comparison.

Have you tried adjusting the neck pickup further away from the strings?

I apologize if that is obvious to you, but lots of times when a neck pup was "too muddy" I found backing it away from the strings will resolve the problem.

On my S-300D, the neck pup is almost flush with the pup ring. Not muddy at all!

I hope this helps!!!

ant_riv said:

Have you tried adjusting the neck pickup further away from the strings?

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And raising the pole pieces up can also help.

The cheapest mod that would work is to wire a capacitor in series from the hot wire from the pickup to the switch or volume pot (whatever way it's done on the Guild). What that does is allow all the highs to go through & stops some bass going through. Experiment with values - maybe 0.02uF as a starting point (can't remember what's best for now). Larger caps - more bass gets through, smaller caps - less bass gets through.

You can even rewire your tone control such that the cap is wired from the hot wire of the pickup as above & have the tone pot wired as a variable resistor across the capacitor. This way the tone pot becomes a bass roll off circuit rather than the standard treble roll off circuit. It will progressively roll off the bass - from full (i.e. normal) when the pot is at 0 ohms (i.e short circuit) to maximum bass rolloff (hence max brightness) when the pot is at it's max position. In this case you can use a much smaller cap for a greater effect e.g 0.001uF (I think that's a reasonably value of the top of my head).

ant_riv said:

Have you tried adjusting the neck pickup further away from the strings?

I apologize if that is obvious to you, but lots of times when a neck pup was "too muddy" I found backing it away from the strings will resolve the problem.

On my S-300D, the neck pup is almost flush with the pup ring. Not muddy at all!

I hope this helps!!!

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I'll try that also, thanks! Sorry if I come off too lame but when I asked that question I didn't tinker with the amp controls enough to figure out that the culprit was the bass knob which was turned way up

Anyway I find that the most I use the neck pickups is with conjunction with the bridge pup on the dirty channel. I use just the neck pickup on the clean channel.

Thank you for the tip, ant_riv