1961 Guild Starfire III Hollow Body Guitar

**jazzmanstever** · 09-05-2025, 08:27 AM

1961 Guild Starfire III Hollow Body Guitar - $2400

I’ve had this guitar for over 20 years when I acquired it in a trade deal with the original owner. At the time it required a neck reset (as many Guild guitars of that era eventually required) and the veneer on the headstock was delaminating, both issues I had expertly taken care of by the great New York luthier Dominick Ramos.

The guitar is in absolutely excellent condition now and plays and functions 100%. The neck is straight and true and the frets show barely any fretwear. Comes with it’s original hard shell case. As I am mostly a more traditional jazz guitarist, I just never wound up needing or playing this guitar very much at all so… time to pass it along to someone who will appreciate it. Local sale preferred, otherwise shipping costs will depend on your preferred method of shipment and distance from New Paltz, NY.

Here’s a description of an identical guitar from the same year on RetroFret guitars in Brooklyn NY:

Guild Starfire III Model Thinline Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1961), made in Hoboken, NJ, cherry lacquer finish, laminated mahogany body, mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard.

This is a superb early example of the Guild Starfire III, the original "top of the line" of this long-running series. The thin hollow and semi-hollow body Starfires have been Guild's most consistently successful electrics since their introduction, and 1960s models are some of the finest of their type. This guitar dates to 1961...the first Starfire models I and II were introduced in summer 1960, with the III added to the line slightly later.

The Starfire III was the most expensive of the series at the time. It was the same thinline, single cutaway, double pickup guitar as the Model II with the addition of a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and bridge. This guitar mounts a pair of white-topped DeArmond pickups, the same as Gretsch famously used in the 1950s except for the color of the plastic faceplate. These pickups were only used up into 1963 before Guild substituted their own new humbucking units. The medium dark cherry finish body is faced with mahogany, with a triple-bound front but unbound on the back. The mahogany neck has a single-bound, dot inlaid rosewood fingerboard.

The early style rounded-edge back-painted Lucite pickguard has the Guild logo and chevron emblem. Other fittings include individual Waverly openback tuners, transparent amber "G-logo" knobs, and the then-new proprietary Guild logo harp-shaped Bigsby just introduced in 1961. The truss rod cover on the early "open-book" style headstock is a metal plate with the Starfire logo.

This is a very classy and versatile thin-body electric; a particularly nice example of one of Guild's finest designs. The sound is comparable to many 1950s Gretsch models and compared to many of these and similar vintage Gibsons, the Starfire remains a rather undervalued guitar. We'd rate this as one of the nicest early Starfires we have had; a splendid early example of one of Guild's classics.

Overall length is 41 1/2 in. (105.4 cm.), 16 3/8 in. (41.6 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 1 15/16 in. (4.9 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 24 3/4 in. (629 mm.). Width of nut is 1 3/4 in. (44 mm.).

**Hammertone** · 09-05-2025, 01:40 PM

That is cool AF.

**jim777** · 09-05-2025, 02:17 PM

Is that a Brazilian board?

**jazzmanstever** · 09-05-2025, 02:23 PM

Originally Posted by jim777

Is that a Brazilian board?

I really have no idea. I never looked into that, sorry I can't help you...
Might someone else here know the answer to that?

**nevershouldhavesoldit** · 09-05-2025, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by jazzmanstever

I really have no idea. I never looked into that, sorry I can't help you...
Might someone else here know the answer to that?

I just checked my '55 through '60 Guild catalogs. None from any year identifies the source of the rosewood they used. They refer to the 'boards as fine rosewood, select rosewood, imported rosewood, and plain old rosewood in various model descriptions and years. But I can't find a single reference to Brazilian RW in any Guild catalog that I have. As far back as '61, Brazilian was still in common use for 'boards by almost every maker of better guitars. Guild started using some Indian rosewood before Martin began to switch. But I think the fingerboards were still Braziian as far back as 1961.

Brazil placed an embargo on export of the big rosewood logs sometime around 1964 or 5, requiring that all BR be cut at Brazilian sawmills before export. Around the same time, the supply of huge old growth RW trees was clearly dwindling, which made large logs hard to find. So Martin introduced the D-35 with a 3 piece back in '65 so they could use up the smaller pieces of BR they had on hand while searching for an alternative source for their 2 piece backs on D-28s. IIRC, Martin switched entirely to East Indian rosewood for backs and sides in 1969, although they probably made small parts from Brazilian stock they still had on hand. But the D-35 was so popular that they kept it in the lineup.

I remember this well because I bought a new D-28 from the Martin rep in 1969, and I had my choice of 5 that he brought to my dealer for me to choose. He was trying to sell Martins to jazz and commercial players, and I didn't have a flat top - so I bought one. At the time, almost no one made a big deal out of Brazilian vs Indian. The D-28 I liked the most happened to be made of Indian RW, so I bought it. It wasn't that many years later that I discovered my choice had cost me a lot more money than I realized because the Brazilian ones shot up in value far more than my poor old Indian did.

The end of my D-28 story is that I used the it (with a D'A soundhole pickup) on a few gigs and decided it was just not a good match. I kept it until I switched to 7 strings about 25 years later, and it was a wonderful guitar. Whether the wood was Indian or Brazilian did not matter at all. IME, they sound alike, they feel alike, and I'm sure I couldn't tell one from the other playing or listening to someone else play a guitar blindfolded. This Starfire is a really cool guitar!

**Jimmy Mack** · 09-05-2025, 03:55 PM

They are "cool AF" I know - I have the exact same guitar, same year model. With that body wood and pickups, the guitar plays and sounds so good, I expect it to speak!

And $2400 is a great price. I saw the same guitar going for $4999.00.