One of the Very First Guild Starfires

This featherweight guitar weighs just 6.50 lbs. and has a nut width of 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Single-bound laminated maple body, one-piece mahogany neck single-bound in white, and rosewood fretboard with 20 frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Guild" logo and pearl "Chesterfield" inlay. Individual Waverly open-back tuners with oval metal buttons. Two single-coil DeArmond "white-faced" pickups with huge outputs of 10.77k and 10.74k. Transparent acrylic (or Lucite) rounded pickguard painted black from the back after a gold silk-screened "Chevron" and "Guild" logo have been applied. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch. Guild transparent plastic knobs with G-logo on a silver disc. Hagstrom Adjustomatic bridge on rosewood base with aluminium Bigsby B-6 vibrato tailpiece. Apart from some finish checking and a few small surface chips this forty-five-year-old guitar is in excellent plus (8.75) and totally original condition. One of the very first Starfire llls to be made and one of a tiny number that were fitted with the very rare "white-faced" DeArmond pickups. A rare and early example, with the scarce white "ghost" label. Housed in the original Guild black hardshell case (8.00).

"The single cutaway Starfire was based on the thin-bodied T-100 Slim-Jim model, introduced a few years earlier. The earliest Starfires were in fact red-finished T-100's and therefore had laminated maple bodies. Until the introduction of the Starfire line, the standard finish for most of the instruments in the Guild line had been sunburst, or blonde at a slightly higher price. In 1960 Guild introduced a third colour option which they called 'Cherry-Red'. The single-cutaway Starfires were the first instruments to have this new combination of a laminated mahogany body with a red finish. Soon Guild would manufacture most of its Starfires and many other models, such as the M-65, M-75 and the SF-350, with laminated mahogany bodies and a cherry finish. Most often the mahogany veneers that were used to form these laminated bodies, were of a variety known as 'Sapeli', giving the instruments a 'striped' appearance. Early Starfires had DeArmond pickups of a type that is quite rare…According to people who worked at the factory in the late 50's and early 60's, Guild used a very small amount of these units before they switched to the more common version with the small set-screws to adjust the height of the pickup poles. Most of the 1961 Starfire models have these white-faced DeArmond pickups…Guild had offered the Bigsby True Vibrato unit in the '59 catalog, but it became a standard feature on the Starfire III in 1960" (Hans Moust, The Guild Guitar Book. p. 62.).

The "ghost" label is a black and white rectangular label showing a ghost-type figure playing the guitar against a fretboard-like background. Introduced in 1959 and used until the end of 1960, it was the second type of label used by the Guild Company.