This was my number one guitar for many, many years. I later swapped out the pickups for some TVJones filtertrons that fit the holes in the top but eventually settled on some dog-ear P90s. Ya can’t go wrong with P-90s and they look right too. The inside is stuffed with some foam to cut feedback, but it still likes to howl a little now and then if you’re not careful. It’s funny, but the extra holes in the body that I hated at first have become the thing I love most about it now. The play wear on top from strumming it all these years is kinda cool too. ;)
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I finally got brave enough to start seriously experimenting with it. I dropped in a set of inexpensive GFS NYII pickups which actually required drilling some holes. (I know, I know …) But holy crap what a difference they made! This thing went from meek to freak overnight. Huge sound now, clear and angry all at once. The pickups kinda sound like Dynasonics on steroids. Now that I had some serious output going on I started getting some feedback issues so I added a pair of sound posts inside the body up under the bridge. It plays and sounds fantastic now!!
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I grabbed another off Craigslist and set it aside. Of course that didn’t last long. My tendency to not leave well enough alone got the better of me and I decided that the blue finish on the second one wasn’t my style. Out came the sand paper! Eight coats of Gibson gold top lacquer, followed by nineteen (!) coats of clear, then some color sanding and buffing and voila, a new custom goldtop M-75T! And gee, it only took about 3 months. Of course most of that was the time spent waiting to let the lacquer get hard enough to buff, but who’s counting right?
This was the first amp I built. It’s 45 watts or so, 4-10 speakers, etc. I had already been playing around with several tube amps including a nice ’66 Ampeg Gemini II when I got the bug to try and build my own Fender copy. It seemed like a great way to learn more about amps and I figured I could save a lot of money compared to trying to find a real vintage one.
The entire experience was great, I learned a lot and I ended up with a great LOUD amp. I gigged with it for several years, but I always had to run a distortion pedal into it to get any kind of grit at a reasonable stage volume. It’s not like I play with a lot of distortion anyway, but this amp likes to run clean until you really crank it up. I honestly could never play it much louder than around 3 on the volume knob before sound guys would start getting pissed. It has way too much power unless I’m playing an outdoor show … and even then. Still, it’s a very cool amp, tons of power if I want it, and sounds great. Plus I built it!
The ’55 amp is one I found on ebay a few years later and I got it somewhat cheap because it was not working. I took a risk and it paid off. Turns out all it needed was a new rectifier tube. I assumed at the time that the circuit would be the same as the ’57 because they were more or less the same amp with different exterior cosmetics. Well, once I got inside it was a totally different story.
The 55’ runs a total different old school transformerless power layout. This is more like old fashioned radios back in the 40s and 50s. Power tubes are 50L6 and this one too has built in tremolo. Without a power tranny it’s nice and light. I recapped it, replaced some resistors, added a three prong cord, etc. and it works great. Sound-wise it’s fantastic!! One of the best amps ever heard. It sounds uber vintage with real raw overdrive when it’s cranked wide open … which is pretty much the only way I play it.
This of course led to me frying the original speaker after repeated heavy use. It now sports a custom replacement Weber speaker and sounds as good as ever. You can hear it being played on ‘Misunderstood’.
Somewhere along the way I picked up an old Guild Master Amp. Why? Well, it’s a Guild of course!! Plus I had never seen one before so that made it doubly cool. Look around the net and you’ll find nearly NO info on these amps at all. To date I have still never been able to track down a schematic for these.
The ’57 is the tweed looking one. It’s probably under 20 watts of 6V6 power, has built in tremolo and runs through a 12 inch Jenson speaker. It sounds a little on the dark side but it’s got a very nice tubey tone. I recapped and fixed the non-working tremolo circuit and also noticed it has a non original output transformer which probably has a lot to do with the darker tone.
Without knowing the original specs on the tranny and no schematic, I just decided to leave it as is for now. It sounds great and has an awesome bias modulating trem.
This amp is essentially a copy of a 50s Fender Tweed Super and has become my main do everything amp. I built this because I was looking for a Fender style amp that power-wise would sit in between my Bassman and my other mid-50s 20 watters.
The guts were supplied by Missions Amps, the 2-10 speakers are Weber Alnicos and I also built a custom cabinet to house everything. I kinda modeled the cab to mimic the rounded front edges of my other Guilds to give it a bit of a period feel. On stage this amp has the perfect amount of power. It’s loud enough to be heard with a loud drummer and I don’t have to rely on mic’ing it. It breaks up naturally at a very playable volume and it’s very easy to tweak the amount of gain using nothing but the two tone controls.
It’s as near a perfect amp as I’ve found yet. It sounds sweet, sweet, sweet and was used on nearly every track on ‘Never Return …’.
A few years back I decided I wanted a solid body guitar. I hadn’t had one in years and suddenly one day I thought, why not? I started looking into these DeArmonds initially because they were both cheap and you guessed it … made by Guild!
DeArmond Guitars (not to be confused with pickups of the same name) was a short lived Guild budget brand that were being made overseas and yet even though they were low cost, the quality was really fantastic.
I picked up the first one from Jay of the Octane Saints and fell in love with it. It sounded great (Jay swore the 2K pickups were awesome and he was right) and it basically just wailed! I started writing songs differently just because of this damn thing. It kinda became my number one gigging guitar for about two years and then finally I decided I should pick up a second one as a back up.
This was my first hollowbody guitar. I bought it back around ’97 and was pretty nervous about dropping money I didn’t really have. I was looking for something vintage but couldn’t afford Gretsches or Gibsons. Then I picked up this somewhat beat up Guild with ugly gold non-original hardware, crappy humbuckers, extra holes in the top *cringe* for non-original switches, etc. and strummed it unplugged. Whoa, it sounded fantastic! It had a rich full sound, way better than the Gretsch next to it that cost twice as much.
I was hooked and so began my love affair with all things Guild. I swapped out the gold tuners, (to this day they are still a mix and match of different brands because at the time I didn’t have a full set so I combined what I had. It worked and I never bothered to swap them out later) I added a Bigsby (of course) and then dropped in some better humbuckers.
This is the guitar I’ve been playing a lot lately. I purchased it back in 2000 or so and was mostly happy with it. I recorded large parts of ‘Casualties of Cool’ with it and it sounded pretty good through my little ’55 Guild Master Amp. That amp is a little dark sounding and the DeArmond 2000 pickups were a little on the thin side so the two worked well together. But when I tried it through other amps it was just missing something.
I got busy playing with other guitars so for a long period afterwards this thing sat in its case due to my inability to get it to sound just right with those pickups. No amount of adjusting or tweaking could get them to really wake up and overall the guitar was a tad lifeless. I nearly sold it at one point but just couldn’t do it. Its playability is great and it just feels right. (Plus it’s so damn pretty!)
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