Shipbuilding

I finally got around to modifying the Gretsch. Remember this puppy?
Well, I ordered new electronics for it. The stuff came in the mail yesterday, all pre-wired, and all I had to do was remove the old stuff and drop the new stuff into the guitar. Easy right? Well, no. I hadn't expected it to be a cakewalk, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined. Taking the old stuff out was easy enough,
but everything else was tough to do. First, the new potentiometers were slightly bigger than the old ones, so I had to drill wider holes into the guitar face. Getting the components to their proper locations was the hardest part, since I had only the pickup cavities and f-holes to work through. Now I have an idea of what it's like to build a ship in a bottle. After about 8 hours worth of work, I finished, and here's what the old lady looks like now:
She looks like a high-end Gretsch, sort of a mix between the Chet Atkins and Anniversary models.

When I was all done, I worried that I might have broken a solder while trying to get one thing or other into the guitar. I also worried that I might not have grounded the guitar properly, in which case I would get electrocuted and die. So I hesitantly plugged it in and...well I'm alive enough to tell you about it. It sounds great and, of course, it looks great too! I must say I'm proud of having done this all myself, and in a relatively short time, too.

If you're curious, my pickups are now TV Jones TV Classics. They're meant to look and sound like the old Gretsch Filter'Trons. Peace.

Oh yeah--I also replaced the old (and ugly) Tune-O-Matic bridge with a supercool rocking bar bridge. Everything else is stock. Time now to buy an Epiphone Casino!