Blue Starfire V Review

GAD

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Yes everyone, it's finally done! Sorry for the wait, but here's the beautiful blue Starfire V of lore, all dressed up, photographed, recorded, taken apart and reassembled for your reading pleasure.

https://www.gad.net/Blog/2020/01/17/1999-guild-starfire-v-blue/

Guild-StarfireV-Blue-TopFull.jpg


As always, please PM me with any typos or concerns.
 

walrus

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Well done! What beautiful and great sounding guitar! That really is a great shade of blue fro a guitar...

And yes, I remember COBOL! I taught COBOL I and COBOL II at a small college. Several students made a few extra bucks as Y2K approached, but then of course, COBOL slowly faded away. I also taught BASIC classes - another one of several courses I have taught over the years where the entire topic of the course doesn't exist in the mainstream world any more!

walrus
 

shihan

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Fun read, GAD. I got the impression you kind of like this guitar.

That color is B L U E. There’s really no modifier that will do it justice. That would not be out of place in an art museum. It’s truly gorgeous. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us.
 

dbirchett

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Now was that so hard?:applouse:

Glad to see you get around to it. I'm curious now how you would review the NS version.

I love my V and all that I do play on it are covers and, you are right, it is the perfect guitar for that. When I went to buy my Guild Executive Amp, I tried to interest him him in a Strat or a Tele. I took my V along to try it through the amp. He gave the Fenders short shrift but when he tried the Starfire, he said that he would trade the amp for it. Needless to say both came home with me.

I'm not normally a fan of blue guitars but that one is stunning. Well done, GAD.
 

fronobulax

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People who want to be really correct when they make blanket statements about Starfire naming usually say something about the Starfire I Bass, often called Starfire I and it's double brother, Starfire II. Other people just ask me to crawl back under a rock. :)

If I was present when the Nightengale was then I will confess to only having eyes for the Starfire. It may be as simple as a strong visceral preference for a double cutaway.
 

mavuser

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Great article, GAD. Now I want one too!

id bet Guild will make a Korean version in this color blue after seeing GAD's gem. so, you may get a chance at today's version of this.
 

GGJaguar

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Awesome review as always! Thanks and much appreciation for taking the many hours needed to disassemble, document, record, and photograph. I completely agree about the Guildsby B-7 working really well with the Schaller roller bridge. The one thing that surprised me was the 2 inch body depth on your SF-5. Mine has a 1.75 inch body depth. Maybe there was a change in spec somewhere in the production run or maybe the blue ones were made deeper. :)
 

dbirchett

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Awesome review as always! Thanks and much appreciation for taking the many hours needed to disassemble, document, record, and photograph. I completely agree about the Guildsby B-7 working really well with the Schaller roller bridge. The one thing that surprised me was the 2 inch body depth on your SF-5. Mine has a 1.75 inch body depth. Maybe there was a change in spec somewhere in the production run or maybe the blue ones were made deeper. :)

It's just a deep blue.
 

adorshki

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Awesome review as always! Thanks and much appreciation for taking the many hours needed to disassemble, document, record, and photograph. I completely agree about the Guildsby B-7 working really well with the Schaller roller bridge. The one thing that surprised me was the 2 inch body depth on your SF-5. Mine has a 1.75 inch body depth. Maybe there was a change in spec somewhere in the production run or maybe the blue ones were made deeper. :)

Don't know if this was true for Starfires but Hans has mentioned in regard to flattops that in Westerly not all the body bucks were of uniform depth, and after leveling 'em for top installation they could vary by as much as 1/4 from spec.
So it was possible for 2 otherwise identical guitars built at the same time to have as much as 1/2" of cumulative tolerance variation from spec, if one was 1/4" over and one was 1/4" under. (!)
If that was true for Starfires then there's a likely reason right there.
 

Nuuska

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Hello

My Oh My - that IS nice - great article, too - as usual - one question - are you sure that the master volume is wired like in yor drawing? If Yes - why might it be?

EDIT - And another thing - the Bigsby FAQ says " Model B-7
is designed for thin electric guitars with more downward pressure " -

I read that as to provide more downward pressure because of the shape of the guitar - NOT fearing the top to collapse - after all the downright pressure produced by Bigsby is not that strong.


p.s. - still working on you know what . . .
 
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