2000 Guild Starfire III Thinline Archtop Electric Guitar, Blonde

For some time, the Guild Starfire III was seen on many stages, often accompanied by Guild bass guitars. From 1965 to 1967, Jerry Garcia played a red SFIII with the Warlocks and Grateful Dead, and Phil Lesh used Guild basses; ultimately they wound up playing custom instruments by Alembic and other builders. There’s a current documentary named ‘Long Strange Trip’ with footage of Jerry and the Starfire. Many blues artists have used Guild electric archtops.

The Starfire III is a fully hollow thinline archtop design with a florentine cutaway. It has a maple body (mahogany was also available) with parallel tone bar bracing. It’s fitted with a pair of Guild humbuckers – at the time this guitar was built, these pickups were made by Seymour Duncan. The tuning gears are Grover Roto-Matic models.

Built during 2000 at the Guild plant in Westerly, Rhode Island, we have here a reissue of the Guild Starfire III Blonde, factory fitted with a Guild branded Bigsby. It’s in very good condition and uses the aluminum Bigsby bridge. This floating bridge delivers a lot of twang and brightness. Some players replace this bridge with a standard floating tune-a-matic style bridge to tone down the brightness and warm up the response. The original hardshell case is included.