Stop Tail vs Trapeze

I may get a semi hollow instead of a tele(guild or vintage yamaha) and was wondering what the pros and cons of each are as to playability, intononation, holding tune etc, and i dont plan on putting a bigsby on it so thats out of the question.

well, you can't put a stp bar on a fully hollow guitar unless there's reinforcment in the to to anchor it and you don't see much of that on affordable instruments.... on a blocked semi-hollowbody like a 335 I find the stop bar is capable of longer and more musical sustain.... its not a low of nature but more of a rule of thumb. ost vintage 335 afficianados will tell you that they generally sustained ebtter before they switched to the trapeze in the 60s but that they have certainly run into trapezed 335s that keep up with the average stop bar. If you can't play a ton of guitars then focus on the stop bar. Guild pretty much exclusively used trapeze bridges (like gretsch) until the late 70s as far as I am aware. It ahrd to compare a vitnage spec, trapeze starfire to a later westerley with a stop abr though ebcause they also changed a lot of other features from top and back wood to depth and neck joint... pretty much any pre-fender guild is a good guitar but different years will vary wildly in features and eprformance. All different shades of good.

a eally safe bet would be a Yamaha SA700 or 1000. Bang for buck guitar but thin on the grund outside japan so don't expect to play it first.

the starfire iv has a center block and is offered with trapeze and stop tail but the trapeze is more accurate the the originals(the one i played and fell in love with had a trapeze) and its more popular than the stop tailed model but ive been really digging vintage yamahas and am trying to find some i can play i may need to start calling shops and see if they have any but like you said they are pretty hard to come by

the later starfires with the stop bar definitely have less plunkiness in general, but no, they don't have the classic starfire sound... they ditched the riginal pickups and changed a lot. I don't pay attention to the fender korean reissues so i will take your word for it.