NGD sparkle motion (now modding)

Winny_Pooh

Picked this up Monday, Bigsby in the post already. Almost acoustic type cleans into my litle fender & vox and great biting rhythm into the old 100w. Also, it twangs harder than a telecaster! (Wife says I need a pair of cowboy boots to play it out) 

http://i.imgur.com/yq82ytO.jpg

tony99

nice chunky flake there

stonevibe

Nice and flakey, subtle...

Corvus

Nice one WP, three great things in one place, Gretsch, flake and trons.

thecolourbox

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to sparkle motion

darthed1981

thecolourbox said:

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to sparkle motion

Dammit beat me to it!

Winny_Pooh

And so the mods begin
Plays well enough but not amazing as it has a rather high 17th fret and would benefit from some fall off on the upper frets.

Halfway...


And some polishing with a new crimson guitars 1200 fret rubber


I love the look of the ebony board

Winny_Pooh

Ordered a proper V cut B3C bigsby from the US. First had to plug two of the tailpiece holes and then used the existing end pin (at the right height no less) to centre it

Then positioned it using two E strings and drilled two slightly small 1.5 mm holes. As mahogany is soft I prefer to vaseline the screws and have them a bit tight otherwise they can strip easily with a slightly large hole.

.

Winny_Pooh

Gretchs have come with straplocks since the 70s

I've had to back out the rear screw to accomodate the bisgby so ordered these cool screw on straplocks. However, the current ones feel pretty stable so these will remain as spares.


Check out these open gear Grovers, not what you'd expect to see. Serial reads as such:
J(apan)T(erada factory)(20)06 31507(th guitar made that year)

Winny_Pooh

The treble roll off on the volume pots is quite pronounced so in go the kinman treble bleed mod, which looks like such and works well with buckers even though its designed for strat pot values


I've used 0.001 caps as these are much easier to find. you can see the resistor tucked underneath on the right.
I've left the master volume without a treble bleed, nice to have the option of a dark volume for the time being.


Most Gretsches come with two swiches; pickup selector & a treble roll off 3 way that has two great positions
Down- slight high cut, fatter mids, great with distortion .0039uF
Middle- no cut
Up- mud, pointless .012uF after a week I;ve realised there is no use for it whatsoever and the switch has a tendency to jump to that position by accident

So I've checked what I have to hand & found a 0.008uF cap which should be more useful & popped it in, you can see here just how hollow this guitar is, the channel at right runs all the way to the lower bount on both sides.
Duo Jet re-issues with the wide headstock used to be much more like a pure solidbody until FMIC started managing production and have reverted to the more desirable vintage spec.

Winny_Pooh

Now just awaiting a tru arc compensated bridge to arrive in ten days or so and I have double sided tape ready for final positioning of the bridge feet.

Last little mod for today is to align the set screws holes on the volume pots to face me at 10, that way I can actually tell if they are up full or not. 

stickyfiddle

That is fucking outstanding. 

Corvus

Very nice. V-cut Bigsbys are too cool.

TheMarlin

Damn cool Jet.  Congrats!!