What's in store for this little lovely? ... Ah, this is where I really went to town (and almost got divorced in the process!) ... but as they say, a guitar will get through times of no woman better than a woman will get you through times of no guitar (and if anyone quotes that to my wife, I'll completely deny it!)
... and I felt this axe really deserved the best (well, the best that I could afford!)
Its going to be finished in a traditional Gr*tsch orange - a la the 6120G ... Dingotone of course ... DB's mixing up a custom colour to match (hopefully, as we speak) and finished in an antique, "nicotine yellowed" clear gloss.
All the standard hardware's been replaced with all gold bits appropriate to the "vision" - this includes (see pic):
- Gotoh Imperial tuners
- "Floating" roller bridge ... I'll need to plug the post holes
- GFS "Liverpool" Retrotron pick-ups ... standard for the bridge, hot for the neck
- Gold Bigsby B6 vibrato ... as GavinT said, it really is the only vibrato unit to put on an axe like this
- Concentric "stacked" pots and gold knurled knobs
- Switchcraft 3-position pick-up selector and (2x) 3-position mini-switches.
- Clear Perspex scratch plate and gold bracket
Wiring this baby's going to be quite a departure from the standard wiring for this kit.
- each pick-up will be wired to its own mini-switch which will enable selection of either or both coils on each pick-up
- then wired to pick-up selector for either or both pick-ups,
- and the stacked pots enable individual control of volume and tone on each pick-up
That's the plan as it stands ... but I'm still tossing up whether to go for just straight orange-drop caps on the stacked tone pots ... or maybe replacing the tone stack with a push-pull pot for the option of switching between a "clean" cap tone sound and a "dirty" diode tone sound ... and maybe even utilising a full 4-diode signal rectifier for some real hell-raising crunch!
... oh, the possibilities are endless!
BTW - the gold Bigsby B6 still has to be acquired ... If anyone has one they want to part with, I've got a polished aluminium Bigsby B6 (excellent condition) that's not being used if they want to swap? ... otherwise I'll go trolling through SleezeBay
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