GAD's Ramblings

Guild Newark St. Starfire I SC Review

May 31, 2020May 31, 2020 GAD 16 Comments

Here we have a 2020 Guild Starfire I SC (single cut) in Seafoam Green that I absolutely had to have based on the color alone.

There is a fair bit of stir in the online guitar forums about these Starfire I guitars, most of which revolves around the question, how is Guild making these for such a low price? This guitar has a street price of $599 new! In 2020! Hell a similarly equipped Newark St. Starfire III (which is sort of what this should be called – more on that later) has an MSRP of almost double that of this one ($1,555 vs. $835 in May 2020). So how are they doing this? Cheaper parts? Cheaper wood? Cheaper labor? There are only so many ways to lower production costs, so grab a cocktail while I tear this guitar open to see how they made it so inexpensive in a world where the price of everything is soaring.

3D Printing a Guitar

April 5, 2020June 2, 2025 GAD 48 Comments

If you’ve read any of my posts or even books, then it should come as no surprise to find that I am an immense nerd. As a nerd, I find anything having to do with technology or engineering to be quite fascinating, and to that end I got myself a 3D printer. As a guitar-playing nerd, one of the first things I wanted to print was a guitar.

Clearly I did just that, but does it play well? And how’s it sound? Read on while I take you through all the details of how I 3D printed this colorful and very ’80s looking plastic Strat that — spoiler alert — plays and sounds just like a Strat!

Guild S300AD

February 25, 2020February 27, 2020 GAD 24 Comments

Behold the beauty that is the sunburst Guild S300AD guitar. I have bought and sold far too many Guild S300AD guitars with varying degrees of success in my quest to recapture the glorious days of my youth when the S300AD was all I needed in a guitar, but this one is special.

Read along while I regale you with everything I know about these great guitars including why it still may just be everything I need in a guitar along with the reason for me now owning a ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ seventh copy.

I may have a problem.

1983 Guild X175

February 16, 2020April 14, 2020 GAD 6 Comments

This big ol’ thick piece of blonde jazz box goodness is a 1983 Guild X175 guitar. I scored this gem from a user over on the Let’s Talk Guild forum who thought I might appreciate it and write it up. How could I say no, especially for the nice price he offered and the excellent condition of the guitar?

Follow along while I give this guitar the full review treatment right down to the wiring inside this big ol’ hollow box o’ jazz.

Identifying DeArmond 200, 2000, and 2K Pickups

February 1, 2020May 17, 2023 GAD 21 Comments

Originally a part of my review of a Guild X160 Rockabilly guitar. I felt that the subject was asked about enough to warrant its own aritcle.

The pickups in Guild X160 Rockabilly guitars are DeArmond 2000s, and yes, this is about to get very confusing. If you’ve done even a little bit of reading about this topic, then your head is no doubt swimming with 2000, 2k, the other 2000, the vintage 200, and maybe that other company that’s making a 2000. Oh, and let’s throw the word Dynasonic in there for good measure.

Let’s talk some history.

1999 Guild Starfire V in Blue

January 17, 2020March 30, 2025 GAD 8 Comments

Today’s review is this beautiful 1999 Guild Starfire V in blue. Starfire Vs from this time period are relatively uncommon, but finding one in blue like this is a real rarity. A long-time fellow Guild collector had this one in his clutches forever and finally caved into to my incessant requests to sell it to me so long as I promised to give him first dibs should I ever decide to sell it. That means if you’ve already fallen in love with it from this picture alone, either prepare to offer me a lot of money, or prepare for disappointment when you offer to buy it from me. And yes — spoiler alert — it’s that good. Let’s take a look.

Guild Dimensional Reverberation System

November 11, 2019May 15, 2021 GAD 10 Comments

I bought this Guild Dimensional Reverberation System when it popped up for sale a couple of years ago figuring that I’d never seen one before so it might be fun to research and write about. I’m not sure “fun” was the right expectation because after moving it around on my desk for over a year, well, read on and see for yourself.

Identifying Guild Clear G-Shield Knobs

September 17, 2019September 19, 2019 GAD 6 Comments

After buying some clear Guild knobs on Ebay and doubting their veracity, I realized that there was no way to determine if they were accurate. I decided to do what any detail-obsessed nerd with a macro lens and stupidly powerful studio lights would do: I figured out the differences, photographed each, and wrote this article so that others might know the the subtleties between four eras of clear Guild G-shield knobs. Read More

Guild Guitar Catalogs, Price Lists, Ads, Flyers, and More!

August 28, 2019August 28, 2019 GAD Leave a comment

I have added a dizzying array of images and PDFs after digitizing thousands of pages of catalogs, price lists, and related ephemera, all relating to Guild Guitars.

You can find all of them by clicking on the Guild Guitars menu item at the top of every page, or you can access them directly via the following links. Please note that these are pretty hefty pages containing hundreds of images so they may take a bit longer than normal to load depending on your connection and the state of the Internet (and my server) when you make the request.

I may add more sections such as Amp Schematics and Manuals in the future. Keep an eye on that menu bar because that’s where any additional resources will go.

That’s it for now. Watch for a long explanation of the incredible amount of work that went into this project.

Digitizing 2000 Pages of Guild Guitar Catalogs

August 28, 2019April 14, 2020 GAD 4 Comments

In 2019 I decided that I would digitize every page of every Guild guitar catalog and price list in my possession. How hard could it be? Kurt over at The Guilds of Grot even let me borrow his binder of additional price lists that I did not have resulting in a project of ridiculous scope resulting in a total of 61 catalogs, 66 price lists, and 100 or so miscellaneous ads and flyers for a total of over 2,000 scanned or photographed images, all of which had to be processed, retouched, straightened, converted to PDF and imported into the software for this site.

This took many months but since I have a job and an adult life this was a nights and weekends kind of project given the additional limitations of dealing with college kid sleep schedules and the general availability of everyone involved. This article outlines the equipment I used and the steps taken to achieve that goal.