Guild Starfire II AmberStar Model Thinline Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1961), made in Hoboken, NJ, serial # 17557, Honey Amber natural lacquer finish, laminated maple/mahogany body: mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard, black tolex hard shell case.
While this guitar looks rather like a very faded cherry-finished Starfire II it is actually an extremely rare variant of the early Starfire series, The Amberstar. This guitar is finished not in cherry but in a light natural hue Guild called "Honey Amber" over the striped "Sapeli" mahogany body, giving a distinctive and very attractive look. This was a rare custom order finish option and the model name is noted on the label as "Amber Star II".
Hans Moust's THE GUILD GUITAR BOOK reports: "For a short time in the early '60's some Starfires with a color other than the standard cherry red finish had a different model name written on the label. No instruments from this series with a Honey Amber finish have been reported." Well, since the book was published we've had two of them but they are very rare.
Apart from the finish the features are the same as the standard early Starfire II. The single cutaway fully hollow body is body triple bound front with an unbound back; the dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard single bound. Hardware includes original Grover 'Sta-tite' tuners, early style rounded edge back-painted pickguard with Guild logo, amber "G-logo" knobs, and the Hagstrom "Adjusto-Matic" bridge on a wooden base.
These earliest Starfires are equipped with the great-sounding white-topped DeArmond Dynasonic pickups. These are the same units Gretsch employed on their 1950's classics, with a white plastic top instead of black. Guild only fitted them to Starfires from 1960-63. This is a great-playing and spectacular-sounding guitar, with a tone you could describe as a 1950's Gretsch crossed with a Gibson ES-330, with an additional high-end 'snap'.
The Starfire series has been Guild's most consistently successful electric guitar line since its inception, and these previously under-appreciated 1960's guitars have over the last couple of decades become better respected by collectors and players alike. This is much rarer guitar than the beat boom mid-60's version, especially in the custom-ordered Honey Amber finish. This is a very classy thin-body electric; compared to equivalent Gibson or Gretsch models, the early Starfire models are still rather undervalued guitars.
Overall length is 41 1/4 in. (104.8 cm.), 16 1/4 in. (41.3 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 2 in. (5.1 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 24 3/4 in. (629 mm.). Width of nut is 1 11/16 in. (43 mm.).
This is a nicely original guitar overall, showing some general wear overall but with no major alterations. The all-original finish has a deep amber hue and shows wear overall, with noticeable checking to the top and back and numerous smaller dings, scratches, scuffs and dents; the heaviest wear is scuffing and rub marks under the bridge base and scraping/scuffing to the lower rim. The back of the neck has some wear to the wood in the lower positions and a number of shallow feelable deeper dings mostly in the first-fifth fret area. There is no structural damage or repair.
The guitar remains all original; the hardware is complete and correct with some moderate wear. The neck angle is good (not always the case on '60s Starfires) and the original frets show surprisingly little wear. This is a really nice gigging example of this 1960s classic, if not the cleanest we have had but one of the better playing with a killer sound. It is housed in a later HSC. Overall Very Good + Condition.
