Few guitarists are as synonymous with Guild Guitars as Kim Thayil, yet owing to a series of twists of fate, a signature guitar never became a reality for the Soundgarden hero. Now, finally, Guild has announced the Thayil x Guild range of signature S-100 Polara models.
Two versions of the S-100 Polara Kim Thayil will be available: a flagship USA Artist Edition and a production-line guitar.
The USA model is a limited run of 30 guitars master-built in Guild’s California facility. It features a Honduran mahogany body and neck, Guild’s ’70s era enlarged headstock with slim neck shape (as specified by Thayil), and a bound Indian rosewood fingerboard with mother-of-pearl block inlays, plus Grover Original Rotomatic tuners.
This USA incarnation features custom Guild USA HB-1 humbuckers hand-wound by Jason Lollar, complete with phase switch, as well as a reproduction Guild/Mueller style bridge and compensated stopbar tailpiece.
Each guitar features a white nitrocellulose finish and comes in a custom case with a certificate of authenticity, and will be hand-signed by Kim Thayil. Accordingly, there’s a serious price tag attached: $6,999.
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Far more affordable at $899 is the regular production run as part of Guild’s Newark St. Collection of guitars, which are built in South Korea, Indonesia and China.
Specs on this black-finished model include a mahogany body and set neck, ’70s large headstock with Chesterfield inlay, bound rosewood fingerboard with pearloid block inlays, Tune-O-Matic bridge and Guild compensated stopbar tailpiece.
The humbuckers this time around are “vintage-correct” HB-1 units with Alnico II magnets, which can be tweaked via an onboard phase switch.
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Both S-100 models nod to Soundgarden’s discography with a King Animal logo truss rod cover and Badmotorfinger back cover.
“We’ve been talking about doing this together for many years and are excited to finally bring these guitars to life,” says Guild president Jonathan Thomas. “It's hard to look at a Polara and not think of Kim, his influence in music, and long connection to his Guilds.”
It’s about time a Thayil signature model became a reality, because as the guitarist attested to this writer in 2019, it’s been in the making for decades.
As Thayil tells it, the first attempt at making the model was in the ’90s, which failed to come to fruition after Guild was sold to Fender in 1995.
A signature model nearly got off the ground following Soundgarden’s reunion in 2010, but four years later, Fender sold the company to Cōrdoba. The new owners were initially excited about the project, but would ultimately focus their efforts on Guild’s acoustic guitar lines.
“There were three different attempts to make a signature model Guild S-100, thwarted by the fact that the company would keep getting sold,” Thayil laughed in conclusion.
Now under the ownership of Yamaha Guitars, Guild has finally been able to make Thayil’s vision a reality.
Thayil bought his first black S-100 in the late-’70s for $250 – which was considerably cheaper than Les Pauls or Strats of the era. He credits the model as crucial to the evolution of his guitar sound.
“There were things about the S-100 that I didn’t fully understand,” he told Guitar World in 2021. “I didn’t really know what distinguished it from a Les Paul or a Strat. By learning on that guitar, my style developed. It was how it made me play and what it allowed me to do.”
Among the quirks that Thayil embraced were the S-100’s “microphonic pickup”, allowing him to blow on the strings, as heard in the intro to the opening track on Soundgarden’s debut album, Flower.
Many of the band’s trademark feedback freakouts were also based around Thayil’s playing beneath the bridge, which would produce high-pitched squeals and resonances.
As Thayil puts it in Guild’s promo video for his signature model, “This guitar does some things that most guitars aren’t gonna do.”
Kim Thayil’s signature Polara models are available from early September – see Guild Guitars for more info.
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