GUILD SURFLINER £395

Old, new, borrowed and, er, orange. Let's introduce the Surfliner!

- Dave Burrluck

The past couple of years has seen quite a few changes for Guild's Newark Street Collection of electrics. The main one is the price with guitars like the Starfire I thinlines and the chambered Aristocrat HH and P90 dropping into the mid £450-700 area and resulting in an upturn in sales. While those guitars still plunder Guild's past, a surprise new entry earlier in 2022 is this Indonesian-made Surfliner, a bolt-on offset that can't quite decide if it's retro or modern. One thing is for sure, at under £400 it's the most affordable Guild electric.

The Surfliner is also completely unique to the Guild range in that it's an original design and, for the most part, a pretty good one at that. Based around a Fender-style 25.5-inch scale length the Surfliner sports a lightweight poplar body; our sample is a four-piece spread and you can see some light grain through the transparent Sunset Orange gloss finish, one of three currently offered.

We've seen the distinctive, back-angled headstock on guitars like the Jetstar and Starfire I Jet 90 but not the logo which Guild tell us is based on a font used back in the 80s. The bright white truss rod cover looks rather generic and, yes, if you've counted the maple fingerboard, it has 23 frets instead of the much more normal 22 or 24.

This off-kilter design style continues with the hardware and pickup array. For example, bearing in mind Guild's heritage, we get a tune-o-Matic bridge but the strings anchor through the body - a set-up more usually seen on more progressive, modern guitars; likewise the HSS pickup configuration that's more 80s than 60s. That said the LB-1 mini-humbucker at bridge does date back to the 60s, while the more generic-style Aerosonic single coils have no historic reference aside from the DeArmond brand name.