A Mint Guild Starfire ll Bass

This quite unusual and super-playing bass weighs just 8.80 lbs. and has a narrow nut width of just over 1 1/2 inches and a short scale length of 30.75 inches. Multi-bound double-cutaway thinline laminated hollow maple body with two "f" holes and an internal wood block. Three-piece mahogany / maple/ mahogany neck with a nice medium profile and rosewood fretboard with 21 medium frets and inlaid pearloid dot position markers. Headstock with pearloid "Guild" and 'Chesterfield' inlays. Two-on-a-side Grover open-back tuners with cloverleaf shaped metal buttons. Two Guild chrome-cased humbucking pickups with outputs of 3.97k and 3.98k. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus a three-way selector switch and one master volume control all on the treble side. Guild black plastic knobs with G-logo on a silver disc (the master volume control is plain black plastic). Combined bridge / tailpiece unit with a flat-base adjustable for overall height and individual saddle adjustment. The serial number ("AG 100143") is stamped on the back of the headstock and is also written on a label inside the bass 'F' hole. This guitar is in mint (9.50) condition. Housed in the original Guild black hardshell case with dark red plush lining (9.50).

This is one of the few Starfire ll Basses that were produced at the old Guild factory in Westerly, Rhode Island when the model was briefly re-introduced between 1997 and 2001.

"A more important Guild 4-string, the Starfire Bass, appeared in the 1965 catalog. It was the bass version of the Starfire lV guitar, introduced in 1963. The Starfire Bass was a double-cutaway, semi-hollow, short-scale (30 1/2") bass much like the Gibson EB-2. The neck was mahogany, and the body was made of laminated maple or mahogany, depending on the finish. A single Hagstrom single-coil pickup, originally mounted near the bridge but later moved closer to the neck, contributed to its distinctive sound. A two-pickup version, the Starfire Bass ll, was added in 1967. Many bassists, including the Jefferson Airplane's Jack Casady and the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh, liked both the easy playability of the Starfire's neck and the sound of its Hagstrom pickups. In the late '60s, the Starfires of Casady and Lesh were used as platforms for Alembic's electronic experimentation, and their much-modified Guilds hold an important place in the history of the electric bass. Guild stopped using the black faced Hagstrom pickups in 1970, replacing them with chrome-covered humbuckers. The new pickups lacked the bite of the Hagstroms, and Starfires with these pickups are usually regarded as less desirable. Interest in the Starfire Bass, and short-scale basses in general, faded during the '70s; the single-pickup model was discontinued in 1975, and the Starfire ll was dropped three years later. (The Starfire ll was reintroduced in 1997, after Fender acquired Guild, but it had vanished from the guild catalog by 2002.)" (Jim Roberts. American Basses. An Illustrated History & Player's Guide, p. 83).