FORGOTTEN GUILDS PART VI
                                      BY
                          Jay Pilzer & Alan McDonald

First of all we want to thank all of you who have written, called, faxed, and E-mailed your comments and questions about the wonderful world of Guilds. At the end of this article we will answer some of your specific questions. But now let us turn our collective attention to one of Guild's most nifty guitars and the mighty Thunderbird amp.

The guitar is the M-65 Freshman. This was Guild's entry level (i.e. lowest priced) electric hollow-body. It featured one pickup and was available in either as the M-65-3/4 22 3/4"scale or a 24 3/4" long scale version.

The 3/4 scale Freshman is another favorite of ours. Get your hands on one of these babies and you can make those five-fret stretches that are otherwise impossible for most of us. It does take a moment of adjustment before one is comfortable with one's new-found reach.

The body on both versions of the M-65 is 13 1/2" wide by 17" long and 2" deep. And these guitars are really featherweights. The 3/4 weighs in at under 5lbs. Relief for the Les Paul weary.

These guitars have mahogany back and sides and a bound maple top with f holes. They were available in sunburst, cherry, or natural and feature an unbound rosewood board with dot markers. Normally, they have a Guild harp tailpiece, but a few from the '50's may have an original trapeze style.

The electronics are very simple with one volume and one tone control that govern the sonic antics of the single pickup. "What sort of pickup?" you ask. Well folks, that depends on the year and maybe on what was within reach. You see, one of five pickups were installed on the M-65 series. The M-65 3/4 pickupup shown here is a single coil with a thin metal cover. The longer scale M-65 has the rectangular metal frame pickup that was also used in the T-100's of the same era. In the early 60's a soapbar was used. Two others were also used for brief periods. All of these pickups are well suited to the instrument.

These are great little guitars that scream. They sound great and are just a great deal of fun to play. They were made from the late '50's until the '70's and are fairly easy to find.

And if you need an amp for your Freshman, try plugging in to a genuine Guild Thunderbird. We will bypass our usual witty segue and Thunder back to 1968 (OK, force of habit) to look at this beauty. This roadworthy old gal drives our points about Guild's willingness to experiment squarely home in a most tuneful way. Most of the cosmetics put this amp in the middle of the Thunder series amps, while other design features herald some changes that were prevalent in the black tolex era.

The Thunderbird sports the same speaker configuration as the Thunder 1 Reverb (12"/8") in a slightly larger cabinet. The fawn Tolex and "mother of Station wagon" coverings and control panel follow the design of our Thunderbass amp. There are also aluminum bezels around the edges to cover the transition from tolex to shelfpaper. Classy in a "Trailer-bride" kind of way.

While the other amps we have looked at have been hand-wired, point-to-point on terminal stripes, the Thunderbird flies in the face of this aspect of Hoboken tradition. Our newest piece sports a pc board for each circuit. (i.e. input, tremelo, reverb, driver) The preamp tubes, a pc mount, and the output tubes are chassis-mounted and hard-wired making this amp much easier to service than our late '69 Thunderstar which reverts to point to point.

The next departure from the Thunder tradition is the absence of a reverb tank in the cabinet bottom. "Where did it go", you ask. Now it resides inside the chassis behind the pots. This makes the circuit more susceptible to noise from movement but as long as the reverb speaker (8" CTS 137702) is wired out of phase with the main speaker (12" non-original) noise problems are nil. This wiring scheme is the same as our Thunder 1 reverb.

The three-way tone switch (flat, bright, brightest) also serves to drive the reverb pan harder as we move towards its flat setting. This design is similar to the dwell control on the Fender 6G15 tanks, making it easy to get that Dick Dale/Ventures "bong" on the note attack. Reverb is also available on both channels. Top that, Fullerton!

The trem circuit looks normal from the outside, belying the cavalcade of options available from the "Guild Syncopation System." This breakthrough (?!?) promises "electronic repeat with variable speed plus organ effects and trick sounds..." by way of an FET in channel one (trem). Again we use the 3-way tone switch now in combination with the trem depth and speed controls to govern these effects. OK, the system sounds neither tricky nor organ-like, but it does add some nice variations to an already usable mainstay.

The output section comprises 2 7591 tubes and a solid-state rectifier good for about 30 watts (think Reverborocket).

Now to the nitty gritty: this baby has spent many a night on stage fighting her way through Fender benders and Ampeg assaults. She has the cosmetic wear to prove it. But the most significant war wound from the past left her outfitted with two different brands of 7591's each drawing nearly 70ma of plate current. The fact that the plates weren't glowing nuclear red shows how tough old stock tubes can be.

Some critics claim that 7591's are both impossible to find and prohibitively pricey. There have been many published conversions to 6V6 or 6L6's. Amp king Ken Fisher at Trainwreck circuits, however, believes the EL-34 is the closest match to the 7591 in both sound and specs. Ken believes that a pair of NOS 7591's will outlast most new tubes anyway, so why change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 7591's are available and worth the effort to find.

We did, of course, dial the tubes back to 40ma plate current. Thanks to Guild's use of a separate adjustment pot for each output tube, we were able to closely match the tubes.

Next we replaced the non-original so-so speaker with a New Sensor 12" Alnico 35 watter. After cleaning and repairing the tolex and cabinet, we put her back together. With a few simple parts, a bit of elbow grease and a soldering iron, we reassembled the Thunderbird and are truly able to rave about our Deluxe killer. This is hard to admit. Until we starting messing with Guild amps, we were, to put it succinctly, Fender snobs--and for good reason. But this Thunderbird smokes. While we have qualified praise for others of the Thunder series (they are fine amps for the money), the Thunderbird just flat out smokes any 30-watt amp we've ever heard.

For a fat, punchy sound from clean to scream, find a Thunderbird amp, clean it up, and play for hours. It is just that good.

To all of you who questioned the 1958 date on the blond X-175 in the May issue, sorry: It is actually a 1978 guitar and a 1995 typo.

Thanks again to Hans Moust, we can settle a question regarding changing scale lengths on the Guild X series. The New York made guitars have a 25 1/2" scale. After the 1956 move to Hoboken the scale was reduced to 24 3/4" although some of the longer scale guitars were made in Hoboken to use existing fingerboards.

We were also asked about some specifics regarding the reverb converter we featured in the April issue. The original speaker is #371448 which makes it a Best from 1958; the reverb tank is a Hammond.

Jay Pilzer holds a Ph.D. in history, which he teaches in Tennessee. He has played Guild guitars since 1964; he and his wife Kay operate New Hope Guitar Traders which specialized in Guild guitars and is a proud advertiser in the Vintage Instrument Shopper.

Alan McDonald is a musician, songwriter, and now the operator of Hoyt-Clagwell Audio, a halfway house for neglected amps. He resides with his wife Nancy in Fayetteville, TN, and is usually found underneath tractors or washing cows.