Orange Amps Forum

Hey guys, it has been a little while since I have posted, but I am still lurking in the shadows

I just recently picked up a vintage 1965 Guild Starfire III in Cherry red with original mini humbucking pickups and bigsby. The guitar looks and plays beautifully and I am really excited to finally get my hands on a hollowbody like I have been looking to for a couple of years now.



The only issue I am running into is that the bigsby is installed maybe an eighth of an inch or less over towards the bass side of the guitar from the middle. This is messing up the string alignment over the bridge pickup noticeably such that the strings do not pass over the pole pieces. The guitar still sounds great, but the cosmetic issue is nagging a bit for me.

Do you guys think I should reset the bigsby by drilling new holes, or do you think that will detract from the value of the guitar. I believe the old holes will still be covered by the bigsby once the new alignment is set.

That is a beautiful guitar. It looks amazing for its' age.

If the string alignment over the fretboard is adequate, I would not move the Bigsby. It seems like it is the bridge pickup that is misaligned if the neck pickup and neck are in the right place relative to the bridge.

If she plays well and sounds fine, i wouldn't touch it.

Congrats, it's a lovely guitar!

Hey guys, back with an update.

I removed the bigsby to check and see if the mounting holes are original, and as you can see, they were.



I tried the quick fix here, just to see if it would work. I put about an eighth of an inch of a wood shim from home depot under the treble side of the bigsby mount.

Much to my surprise and delight, it totally fixed the problem!



So, now I can stop being obsessive over the small symmetry issue and enjoy the beautiful guitar. Hooray!






This thing sounds great through my AD30r. I am super excited and will try to post some clips soon.

It was massively missaligned!!!!


Good thinking on the shim. Can't believe someone could drill screw holes that far of centre when the strap button hole is THERE to show you where is the exact middle!!!!!!


Samll detail I guess - it certainly doesn't take away from it's beauty. Very nice axe, I really dg it - and it being a 65, it's only gonna increase in value isnt it?

Hope it didn't set you back too much, dunno how well old guilds sell for.
Lookinf forward to clippage if you can!

Super nice guitar! Congrats, that should be a fun guitar to keep around!

Sweet man, I was very close to picking one of these up myself awhile back. They play great, enjoy!

Thanks guys.

Yeah, you would think someone in the factory would notice they are drilling holes totally in the wrong place or that one of the previous owners would have been bothered with the misalignment.

Anyways, she didn't set me back too far, around XXXX, and it will probably gain some more value over time. The Guild starfire series are all great guitars, and back in the day a lot of them were considered even better made than their ES___ counterparts. Its just that Gibbo became waaaay more popular and the prices jumped, while Guild electric guitars had fewer popular endorsees.

The mini humbuckers in this guitar sound great, and I recommend anyone looking into a semi-hollow or full hollow (as the Starfire II and III are) to look into the series. They are great values!

I'm digging that guitar. You got a good price me thinks. It looks to be in superb condition. I'm glad you didn't redrill the holes. That probably would have been a bad idea.

baytamusic wrote:I'm digging that guitar. You got a good price me thinks. It looks to be in superb condition. I'm glad you didn't redrill the holes. That probably would have been a bad idea.

Thanks for the compliments, I am proud of my find.

Yeah I wanted to avoid drilling at all costs and probably would have wussed out right before I did it anyway so I was lucky that the simple wood shim worked.

There are ones on ebay in slightly less nice condition going for under 1400 all the time btw.

Those Guilds are most definitely under-rated. The Starfire basses are also supposed to be the bomb. Curious if, like the Starfire bass, the guitars came with Swedish Hagstrom pickups. Supposedly much superior to the pickups they started using by the early '70s.

bassdrop wrote:Those Guilds are most definitely under-rated. The Starfire basses are also supposed to be the bomb. Curious if, like the Starfire bass, the guitars came with Swedish Hagstrom pickups. Supposedly much superior to the pickups they started using by the early '70s.

I think they put proprietary Guild/DeArmond HB-1s in them.

Some info here: http://www.gad.net/Blog/2010/06/24/guil ... c-guitars/