This Guild X-350B is a near-exact replica of the Epiphone Zephyr Emperor Regent.
When life gives you lemons, you could make lemonade, but sometimes it’s just too much darn trouble. You don’t have enough sugar at home. You have a paper cut, and nothing is worse than citrus on a paper cut. You might just choose to ditch the lemons and cut your losses.
This gorgeous 1958 Guild X-350B came through our doors at Fanny’s House of Music and told us a sweeping tale of sour times and sweet times, taking us all the way from Turkey to New York. This is the story of how Guild picked up Epiphone’s lemons and made some lemonade.
In 1873, a 12-year-old Greek boy named Anastasios Stathopoulo, who had just moved with his family to İzmir, Turkey, began acquiring woodworking skills by watching his father, a lumber merchant, at work. Anastasios, however, was much more interested in the local folk music scene than in carrying on the family business, and in 1890, he started his own musical instrument manufacturing business. Then, three years later, he and his wife Marianthe welcomed their first child, Epaminondas (“Epi,” for short), into their young family.
Ethnic tensions in Turkey forced the Stathopoulo family to move to the United States in the early 1900s. Anastasios set up shop in Manhattan and became very successful, and little Epi worked alongside his father until Anastasios died of cancer in 1915. It was then Epi’s time to take over.
Marianthe died in the early ’20s. As mandolins were becoming less popular, Epi made the savvy decision to shift the company’s focus to banjos. Eventually, he changed the name of the company from the House of Stathopoulo to Epiphone, combining his nickname with the Greek word for sound: “phone.” Epiphone’s move to banjos proved prescient, and they rocketed ahead of their primary competitor, Gibson.
Following Epiphone’s move from NYC to Philadelphia in 1953, several employees began working for the Guild Guitar Company.
Gibson beat Epiphone to the burgeoning guitar market, which touched off an arms race of sorts between the two companies. In 1931, Epiphone tried to pull ahead by introducing their Masterbilt line, featuring guitars that were 3/8" wider than their Gibson counterparts. Gibson followed that up with guitars that were nearly 3 1/2" wider than the Masterbilts, and Epiphone followed that up with a guitar called the Emperor, that was a 1/2" wider still! Competition between the two companies raged on, and Epiphone’s growth would likely have continued unabated if not for the production restrictions of World War II, and the death of Epaminondas in 1943.
Epi’s brothers took control of the company and tried to revamp its offerings with more electric instruments. They gave the Emperor a pickup, and it became the Zephyr Emperor (with the word “Regent” added to the model if it had a cutaway), featuring a cool push-button pickup selector. Unfortunately, this top-of-the-line instrument would be the last hurrah of the storied company, as Epiphone’s finances were shaky, and Epi’s younger brothers proved to not be as gifted in promotion and organization as he had been.
One distinguishing feature on this model and its Epiphone counterpart is its unique push-button pickup selector.
Epiphone’s deteriorating relationship with unions led to a four-month strike and the company moved production to Philadelphia in 1953. But many of the craftsmen chose not to leave New York, and some had already begun working for the nascent Guild Guitar Company, bringing their ideas and designs with them. Eventually, in 1957, Epiphone was sold to Gibson.
Our 1958 Guild X-350B is a near-exact copy of the Epiphone Zephyr Emperor Regent with its three pickups, two knobs, and unique push-button pickup selector that reminds this author of the Chrysler push-button automatic transmissions from the mid ’50s. This is the rare blonde-finished version (hence the “B” in the model name), and behind the 60 years of buckle rash is some beautifully figured maple on the back and sides.
Speaking of buckle rash, sometimes you can just tell that a vintage guitar was very well-loved. This Guild is one of those. The edges of the neck are perfectly rounded, the way only years of playing can achieve, like a piece of glass that’s been rolling around in the ocean for a while and all the corners have rubbed off. Much of the finish on the back of the neck is worn away, and playing this guitar is a delightfully soft experience, sort of like a hug from an old friend.
“Epiphone’s move to banjos proved prescient, and they rocketed ahead of their primary competitor, Gibson.”
Especially because of the “buckle rash” on the guitar’s back, a sign of heavy use, our columnist deems it very well-loved by its prior owner(s).
Life handed lemons to many of the folks in this story. The Stathopoulo family had to leave their home in Turkey and start a new life in the United States. The employees at Epiphone had to decide whether to move to Philadelphia with their employer or try to find new work in New York. Their collective choices led to this beautiful guitar time-traveling 66 years to our shop, where pretty soon someone will find it as refreshing as a cold glass of lemonade in the summer, and take it home to enjoy for the next 66 years.
Sources: Epiphone.com, “The Epiphone Zephyr Emperor Regent as told by Walter Carter” by Carter Vintage Guitars on YouTube, Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars by Walter Carter and George Gruhn.
Maxon OD-9 Overdrive Pedal
The Maxon OD-9 Overdrive Effects Pedal may look like your old favorite but that's where the similarity ends. Improved circuitry with a new chip yields the ultra-smooth dynamic overdrive guitarists crave. Drive and Level controls tweak the intensity and volume while the Hi-Boost/Hi-Cut tone controls adjust brightness. Features true bypass switching, a die-cast zinc case, and 3-year warranty. From subtle cries to shattering screams, the Maxon OD-9 delivers a huge range of tones.
Features
Improved circuitry with a new chip yields ultra-smooth dynamic overdrive
Drive and Level controls tweak the intensity and volume
Hi Boost/Hi Cut tone controls adjust brightness
True bypass switching
Die-cast zinc case
AC/DC operation (order optional Maxon AC210N adapter)
Product Specs
Input: 1/4" mono jack
Output: 1/4" mono jack
Power: 9V DC, 6 mA, center pin minus (not included)
Dimensions: (WxDxH) 74 mm x 124 mm x 54 mm
Weight: 580g
Fender’s Greasebucket system is part of Cory Wong’s sonic strategy.
Tone pot with Fender Greasebucket tone system:
This 250k tone pot is a standard CTS pot with a 90/10 audio taper found in all U.S.-built Fender guitars. The Cory Wong guitar uses the Fender Greasebucket system, which is added to the pot as a ready-to-solder PCB. The Greasebucket PCB is also available individually from Fender (part #7713546000), though you can use conventional electronic parts for this.
Fender introduced this feature in 2005 on some of the Highway One models and some assorted Custom Shop Strats. The Greasebucket name (which is a registered Fender trademark, by the way) is my favorite of Fender’s marketing names, but don’t let it fool you: Your tone will get cleaner with this modification, not greasy and dirty.
According to Fender, the Greasebucket tone circuit reduces high frequencies without adding bass as the tone knob is turned down. Don’t let that description confuse you. A standard Strat tone control does not add any bass frequencies! As you already know, with a passive system you can’t add anything that isn’t already there. You can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent. Removing highs makes lows more apparent and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which is how a passive pickup behaves in a guitar circuit) and capacitors can create resonant peaks and valleys (band-passes and notches), further coloring the overall tone.
Cory Wong bringing the funk onstage.
This type of band-pass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked. The standard tone circuit in a Strat is called a variable low-pass filter (or a treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap.
The Greasebucket’s band-pass filter is a combination of a high-pass and a low-pass filter. This is supposed to cut high frequencies without “adding” bass, which has mostly to do with the resistor in series with the pot. That resistor means the control will never get to zero. You can get a similar effect by simply not turning the Strat’s standard tone control all the way down. (The additional cap on the wiper of the Greasebucket circuit complicates things a bit, though; together with the pickups it forms an RLC circuit, but I really don’t want to get into that here.)
The standard Fender Greasebucket tone system is used in the Cory Wong Strat, which includes a 0.1 μF cap and a 0.022 uF cap, along with a 4.7k-ohm resistor in series. These are the values used on the PCB, and without the PCB it looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Push-push tone pot with preset overwriting function:
The lower tone pot assigned to the bridge pickup is a 250k audio push-push pot with a DPDT switch. The switch is used to engage a preset sound by overwriting the 5-way pickup-selector switch, no matter what switching position it is in. The preset functionality has a very long tradition in the house of Fender, dating back to the early ’50s, when Leo Fender designed a preset bass sound on position 3 (where the typical neck position is on a modern guitar) of the Broadcaster (and later the Telecaster) circuit. Wong loves the middle-and-neck-in-parallel pickup combination, so that’s the preset sound his push-push tone pot is wired for.
The neck pickup has a dedicated tone control while the middle pickup doesn’t, which is also another interesting feature. This means that when you hit the push-push switch, you will engage the neck and middle pickup together in parallel, no matter what you have dialed in on the 5-way switch. Hit the push-push switch again, and the 5-way switch is back to its normal functionality. Instead of a push-push pot, you can naturally use a push-pull pot or a DPDT toggle switch in combination with a normal 250k audio pot.
Here we go for the wiring. For a much clearer visualization, I used the international symbol for ground wherever possible instead of drawing another black wire, because we already have a ton of crossing wires in this drawing. I also simplified the treble-bleed circuit to keep things clearer; you’ll find the architecture of it with the correct values in the previous column.
Cory Wong Strat wiring
Courtesy of singlecoil.com
Wow, this really is a personalized signature guitar down to the bone, and Wong used his opportunity to create a unique instrument. Often, signature instruments deliver custom colors or very small aesthetic or functional details, so the Cory Wong Stratocaster really stands out.
That’s it! In our next column, we will continue our Stratocaster journey in the 70th year of this guitar by having a look at the famous Rory Gallagher Stratocaster, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!