1972 Guild Jetstar II Electric Bass Guitar

My buddy Kerry brought this lovely old Guild bass in. His lady Tessa owns it and I was duly impressed. This is like the bass version of the Polara and, as such, it's basically like an EB/SG-style bass but done-up "Guild fashion." It has a mahogany body, set neck, big old Guild humbucking pickups, and that signature, quirky adjustable bridge setup.

It feels really good in the hands -- stable and well-executed. The tone is similar to EB-style basses but a bit brighter and more dynamic. There's a mini-switch that switches between parallel/series in the middle position, though, and when you switch it to series, the thing erupts into full-on fat, woofy, thumpy EB-style sound.

It did play like a bear, though, which meant getting slightly inventive because the bridge adjustment was bottomed-out. To get the action lower, I removed each wooden saddle, cut it down by 1/8" or so, snipped the tabs that hold them in place a little lower so we could fit them back on, and then setup as normal. These light mods mean that there's now proper action height and adjustment room available at the bridge to come up/go down as needed via the two adjuster set-screws.