In a Class By Itself

One of a very few Carved Spruce-Top hollow body semi-solid sunburst M-75 Aristocrats shipped in 1956. This 13 1/2-inch-wide featherweight guitar weighs just 5.40 lbs. and has a nice nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Honduras mahogany body and sides, body with single binding on the top edge, carved spruce top, three-piece mahogany/maple/mahogany neck, and bound rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with Inlaid pearl "Guild" logo, pearl "Chesterfield" inlay and four layer black/white/black/white plastic truss rod cover. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval Keystone buttons. Two white plastic single-coil P-90 style pickups with outputs of 6.98k and 7.29k. Original black "Lucite" four layer black/white/black/white rounded pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch on bass bout. Transparent plastic 'gold-painted' barrel knobs with grub screws. Rosewood with pre-set compensating saddle with two separate feet. Guild 'Harp' tailpiece. The absolute minimum of belt buckle scarring on the back and a few very small marks on the top are all that prevent this wonderful and totally original example from being near mint. Housed in it's original Guild brown hardshell case with purple plush lining (9.0).

"Unlike most of the other models in the early Guild line, the Aristocrat M-75 was not a mere descendant of the earlier Epiphone line. What as first sight looks like a solid body instrument, styled after a Gibson "Les Paul" model, is really a scaled-down version of a hollow body guitar. The following is an excerpt from the '54-catalog: "the use of an exclusively developed lighter semi-solid body construction gives the Guild Aristocrat a magnificence of tone never before achieved in a guitar of this size. And for ease of handling and playing, this light weight, semi-solid midget model is in a class by itself".

It is quite obvious that Guild was going for the players who were attracted by the compact size of the Gibson Les Paul but who did not like it's weight. Also, the sound of the M-75 was not anywhere near the sound of a Gibson Les Paul. It was a hollow body instrument and it sounded like one. Because of its smaller size and the absence of the traditional f-holes, the instrument was somewhat less prone to feedback than most of the hollow body instruments available at the time. It was also the only instrument in the early range to be offered with the shorter 24 3/4" scale length." (Hans Moust, The Guild Guitar Book, p. 56).