I always do my research on a guitar that I am going to do an “On the Bench Today” video on. One thing became very apparent is that most if not all of the other folks on YouTube had a guitar provided to them by Guild. I have not. I actually purchase mine and am in no way obligated to say anything about the guitar.

I purchased my Guild Newark St. Collection Polara Deluxe Electric Guitar as a showroom model. Used but in supposedly new condition. Out of the box I cannot tell this was ever unpacked and was displayed anywhere. Used Mint you can pick up this guitar for around $625. There has not been enough sales history on Reverb yet to be able to give a low and high range for used. I looked at the used that were displayed and the low was $529 and the high was $650.

Newark Street Collection is the name of a series of different guitars Guild released in 2013 to current that are similar to the electric guitars Guild released in the 1950s and 1960s. It is also the name of the street that ran behind the Hoboken, New Jersey, Guild Factory. I got this from a great website called Gad’s Ramblings. Link in the video description.

www.gad.net/Blog/2017/05/30/guild-guitar-factories…


Here is what you get with this guitar:

Model Newark St. Collection Polara Deluxe
Canyon Dusk
Cherry Red
Vintage Sunburst
Body Material Mahogany
Double Cutaway Solid Body
Bridge/Tailpiece Type Stop-Bar
Finish Style Gloss
Fretboard Material Rosewood
Neck Construction Set-Neck
Neck Material Mahogany
Number of Frets 22
Neck shape is what is called a vintage soft U
Radius 12.5 inches
Nut Material is a composite
Nut Width 1.69"
Scale Length 24.75"
Pickups - HB-2+ Oversized Humbuckers with Alnico V magnets.



Well, this has got to be the most boring on the bench experience with a guitar I have had in a long time!

The reason for that is I did not find one single thing wrong with this guitar out of the box.

Intonation set from factory– Check
No fret sprout, sharp edges, or rocking – Check
Neck straight and adjusted properly - Check
Fit and Finish Flawless – Check
Tuners functional – Check
Electronics and pickups functional – Check

Seriously?!? Guild give me something. I am just kidding. I have to say that for a sub $700 guitar I expected to find something. Normally I have string ferrules rolling around on the bench about this time.


Observations

I like the feel of the tuners. I know this is a strange statement, let me explain. They are very smooth and act very precision like meaning it takes quite a bit of turning the knob to tune. This allows you to make very small tweaks. Plus, they are beautiful. The retro open back tuner look is awesome.

The neck and gloss finish on the neck combined with a 12.5-inch radius make for a playable neck for me that seems similar to playing one of my SGs.

The guitar weighs in at 6 lbs and 13 ounces or 3.164 kilos.

Measuring the pickups without splitting. The neck measures 7.20 k ohms. Both pickups measure 7.21 k ohms and the bridge measures 13.54 k ohms.

The pickups and push pull volume pots offer 8 different sound combinations.

You can have single humbuckers, dual humbuckers, single single coils, or combinations of single coils and humbuckers.

I could not find a position that I disliked. They state on the website that with the combination of the two pickups or while in single coil the pickups will not sound anemic or weak. I would say they accomplished this. I like the pickups a lot.

I am now wanting to get one of these in the Vintage Sunburst finish.

My only complaint is that the guitar does not come with a gig bag or case. Also they are not easy to find and also not cheap when you do find them. I ordered a deluxe padded gig bag for mine and paid the going rate of $79. I still have not been able to locate an available hard case. Which for me is cool. I have stopped keeping all of my cases. I keep one of each type and then store my guitars either on the wall or in a padded gig bag. The cases take up too much space and are damned heavy.