Today’s guitar is a Guild T-Bird ST P90 in Pelham Blue from the Newark St. collection. I scored this guitar in mint condition for a great price and had to buy it because it’s a fairly interesting combination of pickups, body shape, tailpiece layout, and controls. Plus it’s a Guild so the urge was appropriately amplified.

I’ve reviewed a 1964 S200 Guild Thunderbird, a 2016 Newark Street S200 T-Bird, and a 2017 Newark Street T-Bird ST, so what’s one more? Let’s take a look and see how this guitar fares when compared with its similarly shaped brethren.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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