Guild Siting: Ted Greene with Guilds

houseisland

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I included these is another post here, but I would be interested in knowing what the two guitars are. I like them both, but especially the sound of the one he uses for the improv blues in the second link. He call the guitar unruly in comparison to the polite mannered Gibson he has put down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21Af0_6Bv6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJSABbXwKxU

Can anyone say what the two guitars are?
 

gilded

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1st guitar, Have yourself a Merry Xmas:

Mid '60's DE400 Sunburst maple body with Stairstep pickguard and small, 1st generation, '63-'69 mini humbuckers. The fact that it was in an early brown case, doesn't have to mean it came in a brown case. It could have meant that Ted liked carrying it in a brown case.

I bought a mahogany bodied '69 or '70 DE400 from Ted's estate. The guitar had been modded, either by Ted or the former owner; put in Dearmonds in place of mini-buckers, replaced the Harp tail-piece with a '90's Guild Bigsby, etc. Non-original case, too.

2nd guitar, Blues:

'66 & up T100 blonde with the Mickey Mouse pickup.

That'll get you close, anyway. HH
 

houseisland

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1st guitar, Have yourself a Merry Xmas:

Mid '60's DE400 Sunburst maple body with Stairstep pickguard and small, 1st generation, '63-'69 mini humbuckers. The fact that it was in an early brown case, doesn't have to mean it came in a brown case. It could have meant that Ted liked carrying it in a brown case.

I bought a mahogany bodied '69 or '70 DE400 from Ted's estate. The guitar had been modded, either by Ted or the former owner; put in Dearmonds in place of mini-buckers, replaced the Harp tail-piece with a '90's Guild Bigsby, etc. Non-original case, too.

2nd guitar, Blues:

'66 & up T100 blonde with the Mickey Mouse pickup.

That'll get you close, anyway. HH

Thanks.
 

parker_knoll

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1st guitar, Have yourself a Merry Xmas:

Mid '60's DE400 Sunburst maple body with Stairstep pickguard and small, 1st generation, '63-'69 mini humbuckers. The fact that it was in an early brown case, doesn't have to mean it came in a brown case. It could have meant that Ted liked carrying it in a brown case.

I bought a mahogany bodied '69 or '70 DE400 from Ted's estate. The guitar had been modded, either by Ted or the former owner; put in Dearmonds in place of mini-buckers, replaced the Harp tail-piece with a '90's Guild Bigsby, etc. Non-original case, too.

2nd guitar, Blues:

'66 & up T100 blonde with the Mickey Mouse pickup.

That'll get you close, anyway. HH

Gilded,

sorry to revive an old thread but do you have a pic of that modded DE-400?
 

gilded

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I have a few. I'll have to get to them tonight. It had white DeArmonds when I got it, but I changed them back to the appropriate Guild mini-buckers. Still have the DeArmonds. Guitar was great, but more than well played. As I said before, I got it from Ted's estate, but amazingly, it belonged to Hatted Frau before Ted got it!

I don't care much for slender necks and traded it off to the Guild Guy, Jay Pilzer. Chicago's Rock 'N Roll vintage got ahold of it sometime later. It was amazing to me how detailed their pics were, for not showing any of the myriad problems with that guitar!

I'll look for pics tonight.
 

parker_knoll

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I have a few. I'll have to get to them tonight. It had white DeArmonds when I got it, but I changed them back to the appropriate Guild mini-buckers. Still have the DeArmonds. Guitar was great, but more than well played. As I said before, I got it from Ted's estate, but amazingly, it belonged to Hatted Frau before Ted got it!

I don't care much for slender necks and traded it off to the Guild Guy, Jay Pilzer. Chicago's Rock 'N Roll vintage got ahold of it sometime later. It was amazing to me how detailed their pics were, for not showing any of the myriad problems with that guitar!

I'll look for pics tonight.

aha haha.

yes, the pros have a splendid talent for that.

incidentally, what were the problems? i ask because there seem to be some generic weirdnesses with the Duane models that are just kind of native to the design. E.g. for some reason the neck and bigsby are not mounted centrally, leading to a bit of bridge slip
 

gilded

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Parker,

Good observation re the bridge-slip issue. I think all of those problems are because of the relatively short neck block, which allows the body to torque under string tension. I'm not saying that neck comes loose from the neck-block, I'm saying that you have to treat the symptoms of the body torque by reseting the neck. Same thing happens with Star Fire II/III guitars, SF predecessors and M65/M75 type guitars.

Every Duaner I've ever seen either needed a neck re-set or already had one. My Red '69-'70 Mahogany DE400 came with a reset neck and a fret job. I also owned a blond DE500 with mini-buckers in the early '90's. It needed a neck set and was almost unplayable, at least with the Bigsby in place. I remember playing a friend's DE500 that he inherited from his Uncle (a 2-owner guitar, see pic below). It needed a neck set.

Back to the bridge-slip issue. The truth is, Duaner necks tend to fall into the the cutaway because the neck block is 1) short and 2) almost nonexistent on the 'cut' side. Again, as a generalization, the neck dive is less likely to happen with the approximately 3 3/8" tall neck-block on an X175, compared to the 'short-stack' Duaner neck block. The neck-movement in turn makes it look like the neck-to-body angle is out of alignment from the get-go. One can fix that by moving the Bigsby hinge over to the bass side of the of body, but you'll have to dowel the screw-holes and strap-pin, then start over.

Here are two pics of my DE400, one with mini-bucks and an archtop wooden bridge (probably a Hagstrom/Guild), one with DeArmonds next to a friend's DE500 at a Dallas Vintage guitar show around 2010. That D-55 was a great Tacoma-made guitar. I bought it from Scratch, way back when. The SF V belongs to a friend. I still have the early '66 SF I bass, but the fretless JS2 is gone.



 
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parker_knoll

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Sorry Gilded, really appreciated your post and have been trying to locate my memory card to take a picture of mine to illustrate want i mean. Just located it now so will get some pics done tomorrow morning (it's night here in London).
 

walrus

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I'm bumping this thread so anyone who hasn't seen them can check out the videos in houseisland's original post. I've playing around with some jazz stuff and ran across them, and thought I had seen them before. Great stuff.

walrus
 

shihan

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I was very fortunate to be able to study with Ted back in the early ‘90’s. I’ll comment more about him on the other thread.
I will say the DE 400 was Ted’s dream guitar. When I first started with him, he would talk about getting one someday. He came into some unexpected cash later, and spent it on Guilds.
 

walrus

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I was very fortunate to be able to study with Ted back in the early ‘90’s. I’ll comment more about him on the other thread.
I will say the DE 400 was Ted’s dream guitar. When I first started with him, he would talk about getting one someday. He came into some unexpected cash later, and spent it on Guilds.

I love that in the clip with the Duane Eddy, at 1:45 he says, "This is home for me, this guitar...". Then a brief comment about it's responsiveness.

walrus
 

shihan

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He did tell me one time that the ES-330 he’s playing at the beginning of the first clip was the guitar he was grabbing if he could save just one. That might have been just how he was feeling that day though.
 
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