W
Looks retro, sounds like a P, some noise and bad bridge
Nice retro package in only 3 kilos. Surprisingly good weight!
The red finish is almost perfect, with some small marks, dots, that are not visible from a distance.
Neck is modern, J bass style. There's some neck dive, but not horrible, manageable with a leather strap and a small help with the left hand. Fret work is nice, binding on neck is perfect. Tuners are acceptable but not great.
Sound is only retro to the P bass level, not as woody sounding as you'd expect from the looks. But there's a nice feature, that if you pull the volume pot to activate the split coils in parallel instead of series, that removes a lot of mids, and gives a more woody character, especially with flat strings.
The push-pull pot for series/parallel is a nice touch, although volumes are quite different, series is much louder. Tone pot works fine.
Unfortunately there's constant single coil hum as if Guild would have failed to install a hum cancelling P pickup (one of them reverse wound, reverse polarity), and this (potential?) noise is the major complain you'll see online.
Update: I checked the polarity of the magnets, and they're the same for both elements - whoever assembled the instrument, took two from the same bucket (or they're the same by design, but I hope not)... :-\ Bye-bye hum cancelling split coil.
Update2: Thomann offered to send back the bass to have a check on (great service from Thomann as always), but I chose to reverse the wiring on the part for the D-G strings - bass became dead silent, I don't feel any negative effect on the tone part. Easy fix for a single P bass wiring.
Update3: OK, I found a non-typical case, where you might have a problem if you put the two sides out of phase: if you bend notes high enough (let's say a whole note at the octave) that the A or D string goes close to the middle of the two pickup (where the magnetic fields overlap), you will hear the issues of out of phase: lack of lows and mids, only some thin highs left. But as I have to fight to get in to this terrain even with easy to bend strings, I'd say this is more theoretical, and a compromise I'm willing to take.
I installed Thomastik JF324 strings, the short (actually middle, 32") scale set fits nice, but the red winding on the string ends at the head stock look a bit chaotic because of the slanted tailpiece, each red winding starts at a different position.
The bridge is weak, I can't set the octave as the screws already can't move the saddles. My luck is that with the new strings they're not completely off.
I'd buy again even with the negatives, it's really a fun instrument! Short scale, but big big sound - and will require quite a big case or bag to go with. The Rockbag Starline Hollowbody E-Bass Bag (item #348322) was a perfect fit, thanks Thomann for the suggestion!
The red finish is almost perfect, with some small marks, dots, that are not visible from a distance.
Neck is modern, J bass style. There's some neck dive, but not horrible, manageable with a leather strap and a small help with the left hand. Fret work is nice, binding on neck is perfect. Tuners are acceptable but not great.
Sound is only retro to the P bass level, not as woody sounding as you'd expect from the looks. But there's a nice feature, that if you pull the volume pot to activate the split coils in parallel instead of series, that removes a lot of mids, and gives a more woody character, especially with flat strings.
The push-pull pot for series/parallel is a nice touch, although volumes are quite different, series is much louder. Tone pot works fine.
Unfortunately there's constant single coil hum as if Guild would have failed to install a hum cancelling P pickup (one of them reverse wound, reverse polarity), and this (potential?) noise is the major complain you'll see online.
Update: I checked the polarity of the magnets, and they're the same for both elements - whoever assembled the instrument, took two from the same bucket (or they're the same by design, but I hope not)... :-\ Bye-bye hum cancelling split coil.
Update2: Thomann offered to send back the bass to have a check on (great service from Thomann as always), but I chose to reverse the wiring on the part for the D-G strings - bass became dead silent, I don't feel any negative effect on the tone part. Easy fix for a single P bass wiring.
Update3: OK, I found a non-typical case, where you might have a problem if you put the two sides out of phase: if you bend notes high enough (let's say a whole note at the octave) that the A or D string goes close to the middle of the two pickup (where the magnetic fields overlap), you will hear the issues of out of phase: lack of lows and mids, only some thin highs left. But as I have to fight to get in to this terrain even with easy to bend strings, I'd say this is more theoretical, and a compromise I'm willing to take.
I installed Thomastik JF324 strings, the short (actually middle, 32") scale set fits nice, but the red winding on the string ends at the head stock look a bit chaotic because of the slanted tailpiece, each red winding starts at a different position.
The bridge is weak, I can't set the octave as the screws already can't move the saddles. My luck is that with the new strings they're not completely off.
I'd buy again even with the negatives, it's really a fun instrument! Short scale, but big big sound - and will require quite a big case or bag to go with. The Rockbag Starline Hollowbody E-Bass Bag (item #348322) was a perfect fit, thanks Thomann for the suggestion!
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