Guild X-175 Manhattan

100 Guitarist October 2013
GUILD STARFIRE IV & X-175 MANHATTAN £1,006 & £862
ElEctrics
Starfire IV
If the X-175 is the 1950s model
that’s a little bit stiff, uptight and
wants to impose its own agenda
on you, the Starfire IV is a true
child of the mid 1960s built for
free love, or more accurately,
freedom from unwanted
feedback and single-coil hum.
An obvious attempt to wolf
down a slice of the ES-335
market, Guild’s double-cut semi
does bring some of its own
identity to the table, including a
laminated mahogany – rather
than Gibson’s favoured maple –
top, back and sides with a solid
spruce centre-block.
centre of the top in order to
denote the guitar’s high-end
status. A slightly softened
version of this headstock shape
was rolled out across other
models in 1962 and became the
standard within two years, and
it’s that shape that you see here.
All Fender-era Guilds, including
the Newark St Collection and
the high-end US-built
American Patriarch Series
reissues have stuck to this
‘raised’ design, presumably to
avoid having an awkward
conversation with Gibson,
which owns the trademark for
the ‘open book’ shape.
A bridge that’s a fl ight risk is the only
thing stopping the Starfi re IV from
being damn near perfect
Heavy-handers beware: that bridge isn’t pinned, so you’ll have to be careful…
The Starfire IV is somewhat
heavier than its sibling but no
chunkier than many modern
ES-335s, despite the additional
weight of mahogany. If the
floating bridge is a quirky
throwback on the X-175
Manhattan, it’s a little more of
an issue here; anyone who
might reasonably plan to use
this instrument for rock in a live
environment is strongly advised
to make their bridge secure at
the earliest opportunity. The
Starfire’s tuning stability is
much more impressive than the
X-175 but it only takes one over-
excited downstroke to make
contact with the bridge to send
it sliding out of alignment.
All that said, for this price, a
bridge that’s a flight risk is
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GIT373.rev_guild.indd 100 9/5/13 11:46 AM