Guild's Answer to the Epiphone Zephyr Emperor Regent

This is a wonderful, full-size 17-inch-wide guitar, and yet it weighs only 7.30 lbs. It has a laminated curly maple top, back, and sides, three-piece maple neck, and single-bound rosewood fretboard with 20 jumbo frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Five-ply (white/black/white/black/white) binding on top and back. Single-bound (white) f-holes. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Guild" logo and pearl "G-shield" inlay. Individual Kolb tuners with white diamond-shaped imitation mother-of-pearl buttons. Three very hot Guild single-coil P-90 style pickups with white plastic covers blasting out a whopping 11.24k, 11.90k, and 15.00k, respectively. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic rounded pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus six pushbutton selector switches, allowing any combination of the three pickups (white buttons on a seven-layer (black/white/black/white/black/white/black) plastic base). Guild transparent plastic knobs with G-logo on gold disc. Rosewood bridge with pre-set compensating saddle and Guild harp tailpiece with cut-out “G.” All hardware gold-plated. With the scarce white "ghost" label. Serial number "13377." This guitar has a later pickguard, otherwise it is totally original. Apart from minimal checking to the body, this is a wonderful example in the scarce Blonde finish. Housed in a 1960s Gibson brown hardshell case with brown felt lining (8.75). The original price of this guitar in 1960 was $425.00.

Introduced in 1953 as the Stratford X-350 in Sunburst and the Stratford X-375 in Blond. In 1958, the X-375 was renamed the X-350B. "The 3-pickup X-350/X-375 inherited the electronic features of Epiphone's 'Zephyr Emperor Regent', which at the time had been Epiphone's answer to Gibson's ES-5. Epiphone's version however had a big 18 1/2-inch wide body, while the Gibson and Guild both had a body width of 17". Even though the push-button selector system was a bit clumsy-looking, it was definitely more versatile than Gibson's Switchmaster layout that debuted in 1955. The model stayed in the Guild line for a little over 10 years" (Hans Moust, The Guild Guitar Book, p. 53).

The "ghost" label is a black and white rectangular label showing a ghost-type figure playing the guitar against a fretboard-like background. Introduced in 1959 and used until the end of 1960, it was the second type of label used by the Guild Company.