GUILD STARFIRE IV stereo custom order, 1969

cherry red (called "amber red" by Guild). 
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were just back from the moon with the Apollo 11...  While Fender and Gibson were slipping towards their darkest times, between large headstocks and volutes, Guild guitars built in Hoboken and Westerly kept very high quality standards. Just like Martin, also Guild increased production numbers without comprimising guitars' constructive quality. 
The Starfire IV was originally conceived as a reply to Gibson's ES 335, but the ever-growing Blues community (Buddy Guy among them) soon made of it one of the best-loved instruments of all times. The guitar you see here is in spectacular conditions, and has some unique features: it is the very last Starfire IV produced in the '60s, with the last serial number in the '69 list. Its real peculiarity is the custom-ordered stereo wiring, ES 345/355 style, as specified on the oval label inside. So it can be either used with two amps with a Y-cable, or with a single amp via a stereo/mono cable which we plan to build for the guitar. 
Semi-solid construction with figured mahogany top and back. SF IV used both maple and mahogany for the body, but certainly it's the latter that gives these guitars the look and sound which make of them much more than "another 335 copy". Three piece laminate mahogany neck with dot-inlaid rosewood fretboard,  'Adjustomatic' bridge with rosewood base, two early-style Guild humbuckers with small pole pieces, harp tailpiece, Kolb tuners. No volute on the back of the neck: such feature was discontinued by Guild at the same time Gibson adopted it, when production was moved from New Jersey to Rhode Island in 1969.
100% original guitar, in exceptionally fine conditions, just as closer to "mint" as you'll ever find!! Not a single scratch, not a single ding, no discoloration, no playing wear, original frets too. The only visible flaw is the plastic headstock overlay with the chesterfield Guild logo, which has warped a little bit, lifting from the wooden headstock front, and after being glued back in place is somewhat smaller from shrinkage and leaves a visible wooden edge, like a missing binding trace (but there was NO binding there). See headstock2 for this detail.
Beautiful fretboard with easy action and original frets, and the sound.... is a bomb! A guitar with a strong personality indeed, one of the greatest blues-axes of all times.
Original hardshell case in almost perfect conditions.
front - in case - body1 - body2 - body3 - back - back2 - body back - headstock -  headstock2 - label - pickup & bridge - knobs - tuner - case

We have just received an interesting contribution by HANS MOUST, author of The Guild Guitar Book, which we print below with his permission:

"The 'Amber' color designation is not the same as 'Cherry Red'. Amber was a color that was available as early as the early '60s. (see Guild Book chapter on Starfire III).
By the end of the '60s Amber was used a lot on maple-bodied guitars and on those it had more like an orange look. When used on a mahogany-bodied instrument it could look (depending on the color of the mahogany) like 'Cherry Red' , which was the standard color for the Starfire series. The Stereo feature was introduced in 1967 and was available as an option on every double-pickup instrument for an additional $ 25.00. I don't think the Stereo feature was very popular in those days, cause you hardly ever see them. I have a few in my database and most of those are Starfire Vs. The 3-piece mahogany laminate is somewhat rare. You usually see the 3-pc. mahogany/maple construction and around 1970 you wwill find a lot of 1-pc. mahogany necks. I've seen the 3-pc. mahogany construction on quite a few Starfire Basses."