Rare 'Uber' Flamed Maple Top-of-the-Line Starfire VI

1967 Guild Starfire VI.

This very attractive guitar has a 16 1/4 inch wide, 1 3/4 inch thick, highly flamed maple body with a solid wooden block inside (like an ES-335) and weighs just 8.20 lbs. Two-piece 'uber'-flamed maple neck with a mahogany center-strip and a nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches, a scale length of 24 3/4 inches and a very comfortable medium profile. Multi-bound ebony fretboard with 22 original medium frets and inlaid pearl block position markers with abalone "V" inserts. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Guild" logo and pearl "G-shield" inlay. Black metal truss-rod cover with Guild Shied and "Starfire" in silver, secured by two screws. Back of headstock finished in black with serial number "DB-254" stamped in blind. Individual Grover RotoMatic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. The top and back edges are bound with seven-ply white with black-striped ivoroid. The f-holes are bound with white ivoroid. Two first-style Guild small humbucker pickups ("Anti-Hum Pickups") with balanced outputs of 6.56k and 6.91k. The pickups are positioned to achieve maximum bass on the neck pickup and maximum treble on the bridge pickup. Transparent acrylic (or Lucite) stairstep pickguard painted black from the back after a "Star" and "Guild" logo have been silk-screened in gold. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch and one master volume control. Guild black plastic knobs with G-logo on a gold disc (the master volume control is slightly smaller and just has the numbers in white). Gold-plated bridge with pre-set compensating saddle and Guild Bigsby Vibrato tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. Oval white Guild Hoboken label inside treble f-hole with model "Starfire VI-BL" and serial no. "DB-254" written in black ink. There are two very small areas of finish loss on the sides of the headstock just above the nut, where the guitar appears to have been on a guitar hanger and there is some very slight tarnishing to the gold hardware. Still, this beautiful 'flamey' guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition with virtually no fret wear whatsever. Housed in its original Guild five-latch, shaped black faux 'alligator' hardshell case with gray plush lining (9.25).

"In late 1963 two new models were added to the Guild line [the Starfire IV and the Starfire V]. They were similar to the double-cutaway models that the Gibson company had come out with in the late '50s and which were becoming extremely popular. At the suggestion of Mark Dronge Guild came out with their version of a thinline semi-hollowbody guitar. Apart from the double cutaways, they were also different in construction from the single-cutaway version in that they had a block of wood on the inside of the body. This block that connected the top and the back of the instrument, ran from the neck to the tailblock. It was put there to reduce feedback and to give the instrument more sustain...The Starfire V, launched shortly after the SF-IV, was similar but had a few extras like a Bigsby, a master volume and the more deluxe Kolb tuners...In 1964 a third, more deluxe version was introduced, called the Starfire VI. The instrument had an all-maple body, usually with very attractive grain, although some instruments with mahogany bodies have been reported. Like most other top-of-the-line models, the Starfire VI had most of the deluxe features like the 'G-shield' headstock inlay, 2-tone pearl block inlays with abalone wedge-shaped inserts and gold-plated hardware. Even though the extra white/black/white purfling lines along the edge of the fingerboard were a deluxe feature too, not all Starfire VI models did get them" (Hans Moust, The Guild Guitar Book, pp. 87 and 89).

According to Jeffrey Foskett, Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys used a Guild Starfire VI on prison tours (see http://www.mountvernonandfairway.de/answer3.htm).