GUILD SURFLINER

11
SUMMER 2022 GUITAR IST
GUILD SURFLINER
Feel & Sounds
The slightly oddball design elements don’t
distract from a guitar that is light in weight,
hangs well on a strap and feels more than
comfortable seated. The heel position and
that treble cutaway allow easy access to the
upper frets, and it doesn’t feel too bad at
all out of the box, though it does ship with
0.011-gauge strings, which simply might
be too tough for its target audience. The
254mm (10-inch) ’board radius is the same
as PRS, marginally flatter than modern
Fender, and sports ‘narrow jumbo’ frets,
which aren’t either, particularly, measuring
approximately 2.7mm wide by 1.1mm high.
They could do with a bit of a polish to avoid
that slightly scratchy feeling as you bend,
and the string slots are left a little high on
the Gibson-style composite nut. It certainly
doesn’t match the smart detail of PRS’s SE
Silver Sky – which also sports a poplar body
– but then again without a gigbag it does
cost over 50 per cent less.
The neck shape might be classed by Guild
as a ‘C’, but it feels fuller in the hand than
the dimensions suggest (the 1st fret depth
is 20.5mm and it’s 23.4mm at the 12th, with
a 42.6mm nut width) as the shoulders feel
pretty big and there’s a slightly flatter back.
Now, we could carp about the relatively
minor setup issues, or we could fix ’em
with some 20 minutes’ work. For example,
there’s an unnecessary neck shim that,
when removed, means we can sit the tune-
o-matic (and pickups) lower. The nut slots
UNDER THE HOOD
Aside from those rocker switches, what else is happening here?
A
ll three pickups are made by BHK
(Booheung Precision Co Ltd,
Korea). The LB-1 at the bridge,
which uses an Alnico V magnet, will be pretty
familiar to any Guild Newark St fans, while
the flush pole (Alnico V) single coils look
fairly regular, except for their partial covers,
which will help to reduce hum pick-up. Aside
from selecting the solo bridge humbucker,
the neck and middle combined, and all-
three-on are hum-cancelling.
Underneath the scratchplate there’s an
open ‘swimming pool’ rout. This means if you
wanted to go HH, HSH or SSS, so long as you
could fabricate a scratchplate, no additional
routing of the body would be necessary.
Maybe Guild has some different pickup
configurations in mind for the future?
The volume and tone controls are 500k
Alpha ‘Made in Korea’ types, the tone cap
rated at .033 microfarads (333J) and wired
modern style. It’s standard stuff with no
treble bleed circuit or anything remotely
fancy. Those mini-rocker switches appear to
be a simple press-fit onto the scratchplate,
unlike the sturdier mechanical mounting of
a standard mini-toggle switch.
Plenty of more expensive
guitars feature these
good-quality Alpha pots
These BHK-made
pickups all appear
very neat and tidy
Under the scratchplate is
this ‘swimming pool’ rout
4
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT488.rev_guild.indd 11GIT488.rev_guild.indd 11 07/07/2022 10:5307/07/2022 10:53