You know it always amazes me when an old Guild comes in just how great they are. They've never really been big here in Australia, but they are such a great guitar. This one, is GREAT.
It came in because it was buzzing a bit on the open strings a bit and turned out it had a fretboard that was separating from the neck slightly. This is pretty common on older guitars especially old Rickenbackers.
This thing has been played, and then played some more. It FEELS amazing and the neck .......... WOW.
So the fretboard needed to be fixed first.This is a fairly simple repair in most cases. Clean it out and glue and clamp it. Of course the longer the "crack" has been open,the more dirt and oil gets in there, so it can take a while to clean it out properly ready for the glue to take hold. This one looked like it had been open for a while ?
Once cleaned out and glued it's a simple matter of cleaning up the joint and checking it's held well. This one worked well and cleaned up well. The wear on this neck is awesome. It feels so played in it's great.
It's a very thin neck too which is nice to see on an old mahogany Les Paul style guitar. This guitar has a lot of the features of the Les Paul Custom. All mahogany, ebony fretboard with block inlays and binding. Humbuckers with similar controls to a LP. The thing is ,it's nothing like a LP Custom to play. It blows away most LP's I've played, and I've played a few.
It needed a fret dress but wasn't too bad. It doesn't look like it's had one for MANY years. Still had plenty of meat on the frets despite being so well played.
Next step was the nut. This had a good bone nut but it was way too low and was rocking in the slot ? Turns out the hard timber filler strip above the truss rod had come loose with the fretboard crack.The nut was also packed with paper, so it was time get to work on these issues.
So the hard timber strip was glued and then the slot cleaned up ready for the nut to go back in. I shimmed the original nut with a thin laminate of timber and put it back in. It was now a little higher and I could re-do the string heights to get the action right.
You can see the hardwood strip in the middle there above the trussrod.
With the nut back in and the string height set it was just a simple set up from here. You know when you're setting up a quality guitar over a cheap one because things just WORK. This guitar intonates PERFECTLY. The action is great. The thing plays like a dream.
If one of these fell into my hands at the right price, I'd grab it. Like I said before, it plays better than most LP's I've played and it sounds SO GOOD. Resonant, great sustain, GREAT neck .............. MMmmm, might be time to buy another guitar ?
