Guild X-175 Manhattan
98 Guitarist October 2013
GUILD STARFIRE IV & X-175 MANHATTAN £1,006 & £862
ElEctrics
body and neck shapes, new
pickups reverse-engineered
from the originals and much
more. Read what Mike had to
say when we caught up with
him earlier this year on p104.
X-175 Manhattan
It’s easy to glance at our review
guitars and think, ‘Oh, it’s just a
jazzbox and an ES-335-alike,’
but really, when considered as a
What We Want To
Know
Didn’t Guild stop
making electric guitars
a while back?
Guild was bought by
Fender nearly 20 years
ago, but now the
company’s electric
models are back with a
bang after a decade in the
wilderness, thanks to
Fender’s Mike Lewis.
Are they slavish
reissues, then?
Well, yes and no. Think
vintage reissues with
some sensible
compromises here and
there but the spirit of the
originals intact.
Why should we care?
Lightnin’ Hopkins. Dave
Davies. The Grateful
Dead. Jefferson Airplane.
Muddy Waters. Dan
Auerbach… Need we
carry on?
Fender’s Vice President of
Product Marketing, Mike Lewis
– a Guild owner himself in the
60s – masterminded the
selection of a range of eight
instruments that represent
some of the most popular and
sought-after guitars that Guild
ever built. Using vintage
examples for reference, the
Newark St Collection features
authentically proportioned
S
ince its purchase by
Fender in 1995, the Guild
Guitar Company has
rarely appeared to be a high
priority for the biggest F-word
in Guitarland. Acoustic guitar
production has shifted from
factory to factory, but it has at
least been continuous; for
nearly a decade now, Guild
electrics have been out of
production and all but invisible.
However, at this year’s NAMM
show in Anaheim, the seeds of a
revival were sown…
Alongside the top dollar
US-made American Patriarch
Series, NAMM 2013 saw Guild
launch the Newark St
Collection: eight classic Guild
models from the 1950s and 60s
reissued under a banner
inspired by the Hoboken, New
Jersey location of the
company’s factory before the
whole operation was sold to the
Avnet Corporation and
relocated to Rhode Island in
1966. Although the Newark St
Collection is manufactured in
Korea, some 7,000 miles away
from the address that gave it its
name, a real effort has been
made to get these guitars right
when it comes to balancing
vintage accuracy, the demands
of modern players and the need
to work to a price.
1
2
3
Guild Starfi re IV & X-175
Manhattan
£1,006 & £862
The X175 Manhattan is absolutely
a child of the 50s; this is a six-string
with no mod cons and no safety net
Unlike another famous thinline semi, the Starfire’s body is laminated mahogany
GIT373.rev_guild.indd 98 9/5/13 11:46 AM