All original except Nitro Natural refin.
1 original big BISONIC pickup, legendary great fat sound!
Intonates fine.
Low stringheight.
Old repaired headstock crack, very stable.
Very worn ohcase.
Starfire basses have been introduced in 1965 and where pretty popular back then,
famous player as Felix Pappalardi (Journey), Steve Boone (Lovin´Spoonful), Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane), Phil Lesh (Greadful Dead), Chris Hillman (the Byrds). played a Guild Starfire bass because of their own sound.
The Guild Starfire Hollow bodied bass guitar is one of the more desirable vintage bass guitars of the 1960s, and gained recognition by its high profile users of the decade.
and It was a very well built thinline semi-acoustic bass, with a short (30") scale, and a rich woody tone - though with far less of the muddiness of the Gibson and Epiphone bass models that was its inspiration. The Starfire bass stood up well against hollow body rivals such as the Epiphone Rivoli, Gibson EB2 and Fender Coronado bass. There were two Guild Starfire bass models, the single pickup Starfire I, launched in 1965, and a dual pickup Starfire II debuting in 1967.
The Starfire pickups of the 1960s were made by Hagstrom (Bi-Sonic), and were very highly regarded. In fact it was the clarity of response of these pickups that meant Alembic kept these in place when modifying the circuitry of the Casady / Lesh basses of the late 1960s. The Hagstrom Bi-Sonic was a single coil unit, with a very unique design. The Bi-Sonics continued to be fitted to Guild Starfire (and JS) basses until 1970, when Guild finally replaced them with their own brand new humbuckers. These are really great pickups, but for some reason, instruments fitted with these humbuckers are not as desired by collectors as older examples fitted with Bi-Sonics.
The earliest single pickup Starfire basses had a single pickup in the bridge position, with finger rests positioned above and below the strings in the neck position. Later (1966), these were reversed, with the pickup moving to the neck position.
The Starfire's bridge was also made by Hagstrom, and consisted of a metal baseplate with rosewood saddles. It remained a feature of the Starfire throughout it's production run, with only a slight shape change in 1968..
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