Guild Studio S-302 Model Thinline Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1968), Hoboken, NJ, serial # ES-268.
This Guild S-302 is one of Guild's late-1960's "Studio Series" instruments, a double-cutaway riff on the earlier T-100-D model. These represented a relative bargain in a student grade guitar with most of the professional design features of the popular Starfire series at a slightly lower price. The double cutaway was a new idea at Guild at the time, some years after Gibson and then Gretsch had introduced hollowbodies in this mode. The sharp, swooping shape of this body is certainly striking looking, reminiscent of Gibson's Barney Kessell but fairly unusual on a thinline guitar.
The thin-line 16" double-cutaway body is sunburst-finished maple, triple-bound top and back. The pickups are Guild's thin white plastic & metal covered single-coil units, nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse" pickup by the company's employees which are more similar in design to Fender Jaguar units than the typical guild fitting. The tailpiece is the standard Guild harp-shaped unit paired with a traditional wooden adjustable bridge.
The bound mahogany neck has a dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard and the headstock is topped with the standard 60's Guild plastic overlay with "Chesterfield" column inlay. The tuners are the Guild-branded Kolb machines specific to this time period. These Studio Models were introduced in 1968 with single or double pickups and vibrato options as the S-301 at $290, this 302 at $345 and the Bigsby-equipped 303 at $399.50. Unfortunately they arrived at exactly the wrong time (1968-9 saw vast increases in stage volume that killed off most thinline hollowbodies for professional use) and it appears only a few hundred examples at most of all versions combined were ever made.
A deluxe custom deep-bodied S-304 was featured by Bob Weir in the late '60s (when the Dead were briefly Guild endorsers) but generally the entire series disappeared without a trace. This guitar has a brighter, snappier sound than the Humbucker equipped Starfires (and most other similar hollowbodies, as well) and is quite a versatile instrument, excellent for everything from twangin' country to garage-band rock. This is a superb example of the double-pickup hard tail S-302 model, a really cool if unjustly forgotten piece of Guild history.
Overall length is 41 1/8 in. (104.5 cm.), 16 1/4 in. (41.3 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 1 13/16 in. (4.6 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 24 3/4 in. (629 mm.). Width of nut is 1 5/8 in. (41 mm.).
This is a very clean, all original guitar showing not much use for 55+ years on Earth. There are small chips and dings scattered around but really no heavy wear, and the guitar remains all original and unaltered. An area of heavier scratching on the lower back edge and a small feelable chip to the back of the neck behind the 5th fret are the most notable wear. The peghead veneer has shrunken up a bit (as usual with Guilds) but is not pulling up and actually gives the illusion of a bound headstock. The original frets show some very light wear but playability remains excellent, this is really a superb example of this Guild rarity, a cool and relatively unknown part of the company's history. It resides in the original HSC. Overall Excellent Condition.
