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Over the years a few companies have built copies of Brian May’s famous Red Special guitar, and while they are pretty easy to come by today, that was not the case in the ’80s. One of the first to make one was Guild who, in the mid-1980s, produced a small number of these BHM1 guitars.
I’ve managed to procure one of these interesting pieces of Brian May and Guild history, so join along while I give it the detailed review treatment right down to the magnets in the pickups.
Todays journey into lunacy is my detailed review of this 
craptastic little import amplifier from 1980. Now, I don’t want to seem biased, but this little import transistor radio amplifier is about as far apart from the quality I’ve come to love and respect from Guild as listening to 128k MP3s through a pair of dollar store ear buds are from listening to Mozart on a Merrill-Williams turntable through a pair of Sennheiser HD800s delivered through a McIntosh MHA150. Actually, that’s ridiculous; this is worse.
Tag along while this Guild-loving reviewer lists all the reasons why you should never buy one of these adorable little wastes of money. (more…)
This 1966 Guild Starfire III came to me as a surprise gift. Well, it came to me after I apparently bought it on eBay while under the influence of Nyquil and Aged Rum. Well, it was fine Aged Rum and Coke (the real Mexican kind with real sugar, dammit) and then a shot of Nyquil. Maybe two. At least I think that’s what happened because the next day I woke up to a shipment notification for a this 1966 Guild Starfire III in very nice condition that I didn’t remember purchasing.
Anyway, it’s here, so let’s review it!
Guild famously made Brian May signature guitars, first in the mid 1980s (they weren’t quite good enough for Brian May purists even if Brian himself did use one in a music video), and then again in the 1990s with better results. Guild also released treble booster pedals to accompany those guitars, the red one on the left being from the 1980s, and the silver one on the right from the 1990s, both of which are a bit uncommon. In this longer-than-normal article I tear them both apart in order to let you know what the deal is with these rare pedals. (more…)
Guild released a couple of variants of the T-Bird around 2017 including the Stop-Tail model which has the ST model suffix. The red version, shown here, was easily my favorite looking of the lot, but when it first came out it was a Sam Ash exclusive model and I couldn’t find one anywhere. After finally finding this one they became very available which kind of bummed me out because the exclusivity of the guitar was no more and all my efforts that went into finding one suddenly seemed a waste, but aside from that, this is still my favorite combination for the Guild Newark Street T-Bird. Does it sound and play as good as I think it looks? Let’s find out.
Today’s obsession is a 1983 Guild X97V. If you’ve never heard of that model that’s because it doesn’t exist… well, not as a production model, anyway. So far as I know this is the only one. This is a prototype guitar for a model that never made it into production, and while it’s certainly possible that there are other prototypes of the X97, as I’ll explain it looks like this is one of a kind. Should it have been a production guitar? I’ll let you decide that for yourself, though it’s pretty clear that Guild already determined that the answer to that was no. Still, this guitar has some interesting aspects to it so let’s take a look at this dangerously pointy Guild X97V.
As of this writing the year is 2018. This guitar is from 1982 which makes this guitar 36 years old. Finding a 36-year old guitar in mint condition is no easy feat, and it took me years to find this Guild X79 Skyhawk guitar in this beautiful unfaded metallic blue finish. That’s partly crazy because this was a very popular model for Guild, but it’s also partly not surprising for reasons that will become clear in my review.
Let’s see how this guitar holds up when viewed through the eyes of someone who really enjoyed the ’80s.
I love me a wacky ’80s Guild shredder guitar and there are not many that are wackier than this! This odd looking instrument is a Guild X79-3 Skyhawk which, believe it or not, was one of the more popular Guild electrics of the 1980s.
This particular guitar is from 1982 and being an X79-3 varies from a regular X79 in that it has three single coil pickups instead of the X79’s two humbuckers. Being from 1982 also means that it predates many of the strange Guild solid body guitars of the 1980s which is kind of surprising given how unique looking this one is.
This is a page to consolidate all of the Guild catalogs I have, first because I can never remember which ones I have and second because I’m tired of people charging for the privilege of looking at catalogs. I firmly believe that this stuff should be available for everyone’s research use, so here they are. I’ve spent years collecting these catalogs, and I have physical copies of every catalog shown.
If you have a catalog that I have marked as Missing, and you’d like to share a copy (or sell me your original), please contact me or leave a comment.
For right now, the images only link to themselves. Once I get all the years straight, then I will add the actual catalogs. Note that some years have multiple catalogs.The 1990s Guild Galleries are an example, as are years that have separate electric and acoustic (not to mention accessory) catalogs. I have not yet decided how to deal with this. (more…)
I’ve taken many of the Guild guitar catalogs I have and put them online so people can access them. While doing that I decided to also upload all the price lists, magazine ads, articles, schematics, manuals, and other miscellaneous stuff which made it damn-near impossible to navigate.
As a result of trying to manage all those documents, I present to you GAD’s Guild Knowledge Base. This page will be updated as I either acquire new items or as I scan some of the items that I’ve not yet digitized. If you have document you’d like to share let me know and I’ll add it!
Some of the documents are PDFs, and some are just images. I’ve installed a PDF embedded reader so it should all just work, and I’ve made a point of everything being downloadable because information like this should not be hoarded or hidden behind pay walls.