The key to my guitar tone efforts in recent weeks is, of course, my current favorite guitar. I am very much favoring a Korean-made Guild version of its own cutaway Starfire model. It is semi-hollow with American-made Dearmond pickups. I know I have raved about this short-lived line of gems made during the period when master luthiers from the Providence Guild plant were helping establish a Korean manufacturing plant and ended up turning out value-priced masterpieces that often outperformed their American-made counterparts.

For this style of guitar, you can have your gold 335 from Musicians Friend. I’m going to keep my Starfire Special from ebay. Actually, I have two of them now. Red and Black. So I can pretty much match any outfit.