Chibson ES-335 Modding Blogumentary

guitargeek62

I'm pretty sure you've all seen my Chibson thread by now, I wanted to separate this section from that one though as this deals entirely with optional modifications that I've made (and planned) to the guitar already, so it isn't fair to judge the changes against the original.

Here's a reminder of how it looked from the factory;

Prior to ordering the guitar, I had a planned set of modifications that I would be installing anyway (Completed mods in bold);

1. Truss-rod Cover
2. Nickel tailpiece
3. Pickguard & "proper" mounting bracket
4. New wiring loom
5. New pickups
6. ABR-1 M8>M4 bridge post converters
7. Non-wire TOM with nylon saddles
8. New Tuners: either Kluson Keystones, or Hipshot open-backs
9. Ebony tailpiece block

First up was to sort out the truss-rod cover. The original was installed a little wonkily, but fortunately I had a spare lying around that I thought to try before attempting a repair. The new one is a different shape (I think it's from StewMac?) but that seems to reduce how noticeably off-centre the top screw is, and I really like the look so this one's staying. I'll probably drill a new hole and straighten it out eventually, and then plug the original hole, before drop-filling it with black & clear nail varnish at some point.

Here's a side-by-side comparison;

I'd ordered another tailpiece in advance too as the stock one would be chrome, and lacked the embossed diamonds of the original Trini's. I think the diamond really helps tie together the rest of the guitar and it was fairly cheap to source anyway. I managed to find a Nickel version at WD Music, the only difference is that the bracket part has a slightly different screw spacing to the original so I'm using the stock for now until I re-drill it.

I could have had a pickguard installed at the factory, but I wanted to use the Gibson Mandolin-style bracket to mount it. The parts were from Allparts UK, but the pickguard needed a bit of filing first. It had been undercut for standard pickup rings, and the gap between the pickups on it was too short as well. The mod only took 15 minutes or so to get the fit correct, and the pickguard was very cheap so I don't really mind, the effect is certainly worth it.

Pickguard: Link

Bracket: Link

The guitar arrived with the usual mini-pots, poor/no tapers, and cheap capacitors. The stock toggle was quite nice and I would have kept it, but I had a Switchcraft one lying around to use up. I dropped in 4x CTS 500k audio pots, (vintage-back versions as I like their feel more than the standard ones), 2x .22uf Orange Drop caps, and a Switchcraft output jack to finish it off.

I dislike soldering at the best of times, hence why I ordered this with the rear-access panel. I'm already glad I did as I had a strand of solder short out the switch for a few hours before I found the fault! I had to ream out the top to fit them but that was made much easier by removing the access-cover and using a standard hand-reamer. I'd have probably just filed them out otherwise.

I hadn't thought to check if the stock silverhat knobs fitted the CTS pots (they didn't), so I ordered some witch-hats for a change - they're technically correct for a Trini anyway and they feel nice even if they do look a little different.

Here's an updated shot of it;

guitargeek62

The stock pickups weren't too shabby, lacking in bass a bit perhaps, but it'd been about a year or so since I'd owned a humbucker-equipped guitar so my ears might have been deceiving me. I wanted to try the guitar out with some relatively PAF-like pickups before putting anything else in there, I was aiming to get a set of Burstbuckers, but I put a low bid on a set of nickel-covered Gibson 490R/498T's on eBay last week and won those. 

I fitted them this morning and can hear an instant difference, so clearly me ears *had* deceived me before! It turns out that there's an easy mod you can do to the 490R/T's too by swapping in an Alnico-V magnet instead of the stock Al-II's. This turns them into a spec-clone of a mid/lates 60s PAT humbucker which is exactly what the original Trini's would have had. I'm going to try the 490R for a little longer with the stock magnet, but I'll probably do this at some point.

I also tweaked the layout slightly and swapped the neck & bridge controls over. I ride the bridge volume a lot, but less so on the neck pickup so this arrangement works well for me. I keep missing the toggle though as I'm so used to playing Strats!!!! :O

I did a bit of work on the f-holes too. If you remember in my thread, I'd asked for them to be bound but they messed up a little bit and failed to mask them off/scrape them back during painting. This was corrected by them before it shipped, but the overall effect wasn't as prominent as I'd hoped and the binding was pretty much invisible from straight-on.

Rather than risk chipping the finish at all by scraping the front back in the traditional manner, I used a stanley blade at about 45-degrees to remove around 1.5mm of finish and expose the binding underneath. The pictures below show a before & after, I didn't do a perfect job but it's a definite visual improvement (IMO), and was one of the key features that Gibson missed off of their 2008 reissue entirely!

Before:

After:

Overall it took maybe 30 minutes? I masked off the areas that I wanted to remove first to try and keep the lines neater, I then scraped them back and finished it off with some fine sandpaper to smooth out any tooling marks.

guitargeek62

Saved for future mods.

*edit* This was pointless, I keep forgetting I did it!

Adam_MD

Like the scratchplate it finishes it off nicely.

guitargeek62

Saved for future mods.

*edit* This was pointless, I keep forgetting I did it!

Andyjr1515

Visually some great mods. It's looking splendid!

guitargeek62

Cheers! I can't play it today, fingers are still aching from yesterday and I'd rather not bleed all over it! I reckon I played it for about 6 hours all-in-all - I haven't done that for about 5 years so I guess that's a good sign!

*edit* Forgot to say, I cleaned up and oiled the fingerboard too, it's come up beautifully. I also gave the frets a polish, haven't needed to dress any of them yet but probably would if I wanted to bring the action down much lower than I normally go for. 

Part of me is tempted to wire-wool the back of the neck and turn it into a matte/satin finish there but I don't know if it would end up looking so good over the metallic finish.

Niallmo

Loving it so far, much better with the pickguard.

guitargeek62

Cheers, I've got a few more bits en route to finish it off. Some new tuners, and a no-wire ABR-1 to drop onto the M8>M4 converters. The tuners are going to require a bit of work to fit, but shouldn't be too problematic.

I couldn't get nickel parts for everything, so it's going to be in-keeping with a '65 transition model in that some bits will be chrome, others nickel.

guitargeek62

I've got some more pics to add tomorrow, and there's a new set of p'ups arriving next week.

zenzeypher

I've been writing a comprehensive study on the differences between Gibson/Chibson and Epiphone guitars based on the fact I now have all 3 in the house together.. Only Les Pauls.. sorry to derail slightly thought it would be of interest.

such as cavity differences, pots, frets, binding, shape, cutaway etc.

Lovely guitar btw, if it helps my actual Gibson LP has a wonky truss cover.

guitargeek62

^ Nice idea, I've found plenty of differences between this one and the real thing, but I still catch myself just staring at it and thinking how great it looks.

Anyway, back to the mods.

I've always preferred the look of the old-style ABR-1s to the newer Nashville types, and also the older thin posts to the larger slot-head posts. My plan was to fit some lovely Göldo adapter posts that would allow me to drop in a normal ABR-1 bridge instead of the current larger-post version. The stock bridge was okay, but it rattled a bit as per usual on these. With that in mind I ordered a Gotoh replacement, but accidentally bought the Nashville one after all but decided to stick with it. Here's the two side-by-side, you can easily see the difference in the quality of the plating on them;

Ignore the little bit on the back of the original bridge for now btw, I'll come to that later.

The next step was to fit the mounts, it's the simplest "modification" ever as they use the existing bushings. Here's the Gotoh bridge with the normal ABR-1 posts, and the conversion M8>M4 posts;

I needed to file some slots into the saddles too as they're only notched, but that was a 5 minute job using these files from StewMac.

So here's the fitted bridge (prior to intonation & setup), with an additional DIY mod added on the back;

I added the foam mute to the bridge to reduce some of the overtones & ringing from the excess string length between the bridge and the trapeze. It's only held on with some double-sided tape but it works perfectly and is pretty hard to spot except from this angle.

There's a little more travel on the nashville bridge, and I must be honest that the lack of rattling from the saddles compared to the original one (even after nail varnish was used!) is easily worth the work.  

GuitarMonkey

guitargeek62 said:

I added the foam mute to the bridge to reduce some of the overtones & ringing from the excess string length between the bridge and the trapeze.

A Bigsby would sort that out.

guitargeek62

Lol, it's crossed my mind! I think I'll have one on my next 335 though, but that one will be more of a Cornell sig and might be one of the Edwards 335s rather than another Chibson (not that I'm averse to buying another!).

I've just ordered a set of humbucker-sized Super'Trons from Mojo Pickups, much the same as these but with rail magnets for more clarity & oomph;

ICBM

It's absolutely amazing how much difference that diamond on the tailpiece makes.

The other things too. It's the little details which make all the difference in the world between something which looks (frankly) a bit cheap, and something which looks totally classy and 'right'. I wouldn't expect everyone to understand .

I think the new pickups will spoil it though, sorry!

The best solution is to have a Chretsch made to put them in.

guitargeek62

Thanks, glad someone else thinks so too!

The mods have been a big part of the fun from this project; as you it didn't look quite right initially, but it hasn't really taken anything drastic (imo) to improve it to this point.

The pickups are part of my long-term plan, I know that I like love Super'Trons in other guitars but I've not used them in a 335 before. I agree that they probably won't look "right" though, but it might give it a bit of a Teisco/Junk guitar look for a while. I've really liked what I've heard from the Chris Cornell demos though so this is essentially a short-term experiment to see how I get on with them in there. The plan is that if I do like how these sound then I'll go for another 335 at some point and drop the Mojos into that one, while reverting back to HB's in the "Trini". On the other hand, if I don't like them on here, then I have another guitar that'll suit them really nicely too.

I don't dislike the 490/498 humbuckers that are in it currently btw, but a little bit more sparkle would be nice.

guitargeek62

Another update!

I've changed my Mojo order back to normal polepieces rather than rail magnets. As much I like the look & tone of Super'Trons, I'm pretty sure I'll be happier with the look of the normal versions and I can compensate for the tonal difference pretty easily.

Also, I fitted some Hipshot Tuners yesterday. I needed to ream out the existing holes to 10mm which would be a simple enough job, but unfortunately they were drilled slightly too close together initially, and not quite in line with each other. I'd prefer to do a proper job of correcting this normally by plugging the holes and then redrilling them accurately, but given that I plan on refinishing the face of the headstock at some point it can wait until then otherwise I'd never have gotten around to installing these! The job took about 20 minutes all in all, there really isn't *any* room between the tuner bodies themselves so I got lucky there when measuring up prior to ordering them. I'm not 100% convinced by the stock buttons yet, but they're growing on me, the feel of them though is lovely and they seem very smooth and stable in use so far.

guitargeek62

One more thing, I bought some PRS 59/09 pickups on eBay yesterday so I'll be trying those out in favour of the Gibson 490/498 set before I install the Mojo's. I've heard that they're a good PAF-ish pickup with a nice amount of detail & clarity in the top-end so that could actually accomplish what I was hoping to achieve with the Mojo'Trons ironically. Still, I'll have a use for both sets soon enough anyway but I expect to sell the Gibsons shortly.

*edit* The fact that they're splittable could be handy too, I'm going to try and figure out a way to get the PRS 5-way tones without faffing around too much - maybe one of these 6-way toggle swtiches?

http://www.freewayswitch.com

DrBob

My friend Dave has installed one of ^those switches in hhis JJ along with a pair of Ash's Blitz Spirits. He flipping loves it

ICBM

guitargeek62 said:

I'm going to try and figure out a way to get the PRS 5-way tones without faffing around too much - maybe one of these 6-way toggle swtiches?

http://www.freewayswitch.com

I don't think you can get the PRS 5-way sounds, those require a specialist switch (or one with at least four independent poles), but you could certainly get the PRS 3-way/toggle sounds, which is what it's designed to do and are probably more useful anyway.

I wonder whether they're reliable? I'm innately suspicious of something which operates with a little mechanism like that instead of the Edwardian-telegraph engineering of a Switchcraft…

TTony

All those mods

X_X

Ruin the resale value, no-one'll want it now it's not stock.