Black Keys has created new interest in them,
understand that my dad was a jazz guy; he
return to Guild. They said that the company
and the present day Guild Company, owned
wasn’t into rock ‘n roll, so I was the one who
was floundering and they were going to farm
by Cordoba, has just released them with the
gave him ideas and opinions about what Guild
all the guitar production out to Asia. Guild’s
original complicated electronic circuitry and
should be offering players.
parent company, Avnet Corporation, offered
other features in place. I can see that the
circuitry was based on the Fender Jaguar.
me a three year contract, so I went back from
[CG] You eventually left Guild and came back
’83 to ’86. During that time, we updated the
in the 1980’s. Can you tell us about that?
solidbody guitars. We got rid of those ugly S
Mark: It was a bit complicated for most
series guitars that didn’t sell and came up with
players. You had to work with it for a while to
Mark: I couldn’t work with my father anymore.
the X-79, the X-83, X-88 and all those other
get all the sounds. I was also involved with the
Sometimes, there’s lots of love and tension
wild models. The weirdest one was the Blade
development of the Starfire bass. My father did
between fathers and sons who work together.
Runner. That was a very cool looking guitar
not want to make a bass. He thought the necks
I went into television commercial production
though. We didn’t design that one, someone
would warp or break off due to the tension of
and did that for fifteen years. I got a call from
else did, but we built and marketed it for a little
the heavy strings, but they didn’t. You have to
someone I knew in 1983 telling me I should
while. I took the X-79 and flipped it over, and
that was a nice looking guitar. I also designed
the Pilot bass, which did very well for us. It
was named after my father, who had gotten
his pilot’s license and eventually died in a plane
crash in 1972.
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Nov Dec 2016
CollectibleGuitar.com