the mod squad
Our mod squad chief, Dave Burrluck, gets told his bridge pickup sound isn’t very good by someone who’s never heard it! What’s going on?
Back in 2016 I bought a Guild Newark St Starfire V from Fender who graciously gave me an artist deal discount. I’d been very impressed with these Fender-created, made-in-Korea recreations of Guild’s past and this Starfire was no exception. Sure, it was heavier than I’d have liked but I needed a thinline semihollow and certainly wasn’t in the market for the real thing.
Personally, I’ve had a soft spot for Guild for many years. Their slightly different take on the electric guitar had always appealed and Hans Moust’s The Guild Guitar Book, signed by the author in 1996, is a very well-thumbed tome.
I have to admit that after I bought the Starfire I aged it a little by cutting back and hand-buffing the finish, but I liked it so much I didn’t feel the need to touch anything else. It was swiftly put into action and got a lot of positive reaction both for its looks – “the old ones are the best” – and its sound.
Some months later I returned to the band I’d originally played the Starfire V with and the band leader, who’d previously raved about my Guild, had now gone rather cold. “I don’t like the bridge pickup sound of that guitar,” he announced unprompted. I shrugged and changed the subject while thinking what he had said was strange as I’d only ever used the dual pickup mix and the neck pickup for the band’s jazzy/blues function set. Odd.
A while later I came across a forum post on how Fender, in creating the Newark St Guild range, had got the mini-humbucking LB-1 pickups all wrong. It said the bridge pickup was underpowered, Fender had bought a mismatched original set on eBay and cloned them, that they were all idiots, and the original poster was the only person who knew what he was talking about. The penny dropped. My bandleader had read the post and reported it back to me as if it was his very own experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a vintage Starfire so I’m sure that post is all factual. But the thing is – vintage spec or not – I really, really like the so-called ‘mismatch’ of the two LB-1s. When I later tested a Newark St Starfire II with the same LB-1s I said, “Balancing the pickups is key to finding your own sound and the neck has surprising poke parried by the clean, single-coil like bridge. But adjust the heights to marry the outputs and there’s excellent width sonically and a middle position that’s actually addictive for all sorts of rhythm comping.”
I gigged and recorded with that Guild too and had nothing but praise for it.
Talking to Radioshop Pickups I noticed they offered a rewind to correct this mismatched LB-1 ‘problem’. Okay, I thought, if it’s going to improve the sound of my Guilds, let’s give it a go. I pulled out the pickups from the Starfire V and Radioshop did their thing. On receipt of the rewound LB-1s I soldered them back into my Starfire V for a beautifully balanced chime-y sound that hints at all sorts of classic semis. But – and this is important – it no longer sounded like my Starfire. I’d somehow lost that treble-to-bass width that I really liked. And comparing them with my Starfire II with its original LB-1s it still had that sound – the bright, single-coil-y bridge and the powerful neck that correctly balanced by adjusting the pickup heights gave me the sound I like.
You’d imagine that a fully hollow thinline (the II) would be more semi sounding than a centre-blocked semi (the V) but here I had the reverse. The Starfire V has its tune-o-matic on a wooden-foot bridge while the IIs is mounted directly to the body. But I ended up putting the original LB-1s back into my Starfire V and once again enjoyed its unique voice while the rewound LB-1s went into the Starfire II enhancing its more jazz/blues sound.
There is no right way, no right sound, irrelevant of what you’re told or the specs you read. Find your own voice.
Radioshop Guild lB-1 Rewind
Cost: £60 (per pickup) plus postage. Skill level: If you can solder, it’s easy. www.radioshoppickups.com Pros: Provides a more vintage accurate, balanced set Cons: You might lose the ‘mismatch’ that offers the appeal with these modern Guild mini-humbuckers