This guitar has a design inspired by the classic Gretsch
Roundup. It features an orange- stained body, wood-burned designs, tooled
leather-bound sides, a set neck, P-90 pickups, and a special wiring mod derived
from GUITARNUTZ.COM. Though it has P-90s, this guitar is effectively SILENT due
to its virtually perfect grounding and shielding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPjboYD8VJg
FLAWS:
That being said- this guitar does have some issues. I didn't
anticipate the polepiece spacing being wider than the neck- I compensated the
pickup position as best I could to accomodate this. The neck pickup's bass
polepiece (string 6) is farther out than I would like, but it still picks up
the string.
The finish is a meld of a semi-gloss finish I applied and a
gloss stringed instrument lacquer that I decided to apply later. The finish is
not what you would call pristine, but it does cover the body and neck. Since
this was a renovation and partially an experiment, I feel less guilty about
this fact.
The neck is too narrow- I don't know why. Apparently, that's
just how they made the Bradley Les Paul copies. As a result, string 6 and 1 are
closer to the ends of the frets than I would prefer. As seen in the video, you
can play and not experience problems, but if you wanted to add a lot of
aggressive vibrato, you would be likely to pull the string over the edge of the
fingerboard and frets. If you think ahead and vibe "into" the neck,
you wouldn't have problems.
The bridge and string and stop tailpiece posts sit a little
too far to the right on the body, which meant I had to make a custom bridge and
a custom string retainer to compensate. The saddles are fully adjustable, so
the intonation is perfect- I had just "assumed" that the original
post holes would be the same position as on the original top. When I clamped
and glued the neck in (with hide glue) apparently it was shifted slightly...
which mean the posts had to be adjusted. BUT, after originally placing the
posts I did some cosmetic flourishes around the post holes... a totally amateur
mistake. (Sigh) So I had to make those extra pieces, and now it's fine, but not
what I would classify as ideal.
So, there are some great things about this guitar (wiring,
artistic designs), and there are some less than pleasing things to me
(imperfect polepiece alignment, a finish that isn't "flawless,"
bridge posts set slightly to the right requiring a modified bridge and retainer,
and outer strings positioned a little too close to the edges of the frets.
I just hate not having things absolutely
perfect. I will be glad to keep this guitar, unless someone likes it enough to
buy it- but I will only let that happen
if that person knows exactly what the instrument is. Worst case, a learning
experience for me that ended up with a functional guitar.
