BIGSBY OLD TIMERS
CHARLIE CHRISTIAN SOLO-FLIGHT
I've never been to Alaska, but this guitar has.
I got on a jazz body, f-hole kick in early 2004 and saw a black Charlie Christian Solo-Flight with a stop tail on eBay. I checked the reviews on the Internet, and everyone was raving about this particular model. Later, I saw a sunburst one with gold hardware and a trapeze/floating bridge and that was the one - all the way from a music store in Alaska. The guitar was made by Samick (model CCFT-650) in 1998. Also, it's only the second sunburst guitar I've owned (my first-ever guitar was a tobacco sunburst).
The guitar came to me in pretty rough condition. The gold hardware was faded and some of the frets were popping. I also wanted to replace the tuners, the pickups, and the trapeze bridge. I swapped the tuners for gold locking Schallers - with ebony buttons. I also wired in a set of Seymour Duncan Jazz pickups. But man, did I have trouble with the bridge. First, I bought a gold Bigsby trem, but it was the wrong size. I sold it and ordered a new one (an expensive B7G), but installing it was a hassle. I had to take part of the original Samick bridge (the part that surrounds the bottom strap button) and mount it to the body, with the Bigsby going over it. I also added gold Schaller straplocks. Hammering in the frets wasn't too difficult, since I had the proper fretting tools for it.
I was a bit overwhelmed with the work at first, but it turned out well. I was able to wire up the pickups myself, as I left the original 3-way switch and wiring in place. By the way, the guitar comes stock with push-pull tone knobs that split the coils for each pickup - very nice. I also was pleasantly surprised that the Duncan Jazz pickups sounded so good. I've always meant to try these models.
The Solo-Flight holds a distinct place in my collection, as it is the only guitar I have with gold hardware, a floating bridge, and Duncan Jazz pickups. To make it even more distinctive, I strung it up with D'Addario Stainless Steel Half Rounds. This guitar looks really cool and sounds even better. And, it's been places I haven't.
June 2004
DeARMOND M-75T
My second guitar with a Bigsby trem, and man, is this thing heavy!
I had seen these DeArmond (made by Guild) guitars years ago in trade magazines and always thought that they looked cool. They seemed to disappear in the late 1990s, probably after Guild was bought out by Fender. I stumbled upon a couple of them on the Internet and read some on-line reviews and since it is out of production (major sense of urgency!), I decided to add one to my collection. I figured it was a different enough guitar with the Bigsby trem, DeArmond single-coil pickups and blue sparkle paint job. Besides, it's the closest I'll probably ever get to a Guild guitar with a Bigsby without taking out another mortgage.
I bought the guitar on-line from a music store in Rochester, New York in early 2004. Thankfully, the guitar did not require a major overhaul. The bridge was cool and so were the USA-made DeArmond 2K "Dynasonic-style" pickups. It also boasts a set-in neck and there was zero fret wear. I did add the usual chrome Schaller straplocks and locking tuners, though - no big deal.
Two things that required a bit more attention were a metal fatigue crack in the bridge and the cheap stock Tune-O-Matic bridge. I didn't think the DeArmond Bigsby-licensed trem needed to be stabilized, but I did end up driving a screw through the tail into the body - just in case. It's not going anywhere. I bought a chrome Schaller Roller Tune-O-Matic bridge and thought it would be an easy swap, but I had to remove the stock anchor bushings, as well, which was a pain. Of course, the Schaller anchors were smaller, so I had to add some industrial-strength wood filler before mounting them. Oh well. It turned out just fine.
Oh yeah, did I mention the weight? This things is really, really heavy. The body is made out of agathis - a wood similar to mahogany - and gives the guitar some mass that would rival the heaviest of Gibson Les Pauls. The guitar is set up well and plays nice, and gets a really cool tone. Thank goodness I didn't have to mess with any of the electronics.
February 2004
DOMINO SURFRIDER 6000
So what exactly is a Domino Surfrider 6000? Well...
There actually was a guitar company in the 1960s called Domino, and they made some interesting-looking, surf-style guitars. But this isn't one of them. What we have here is a Jay Turser Surfmaster guitar body with an Eden guitar neck. And the whole thing cost about $300 to put together.
This project actually started with the ugly seafoam green with brown tortoise shell pickguard combination. A friend of a friend had put together a relic Telecaster with that combo and I thought it looked way cool. So when I saw a Turser Surfmaster body on ebay for $60 (with Artec pickups and all wiring), I had to do go down that road. Of course, the Turser Surfmaster is a take on Fender's Jazzmaster, so I looked and looked for an inexpensive rosewood neck - with binding. Enter Eden. The neck was under $50 and is actually not too bad. Not a Warmoth, but it's a good value.
Of course, there had to be some hardware swapped out. The Turser body was missing the Jazzmaster-style vibrato assembly, so I ordered a sturdy one from All Parts - complete with the essential Buzz Stop Roller to aid in the bridge string angle. The bridge is a new Wilkinson Roller Tune-O-Matic, which was actually stock on this Turser model, but can be picked up for less than $20 if you look hard enough. I then picked up a set of GFS vintage locking tuners, a new set of chrome knobs with pearl tops, and a pair of chrome Schaller straplocks.
I really broke the bank with a $60 custom brown tortoise shell pickguard from WD. Perfect fit and the color scheme with the seafoam green is hideous! The Turser body came stock with cream pickup covers and 5-way switch tip, but I thought chrome covers and a white tip looked better, so I swapped those out.
So how did I come up with the Domino Surfrider 6000 name? I had seen the actual Domino guitar in a shop and was interested enough to look up the name, as I had never heard of that manufactuer. Cool name, I thought. Since it's a surf guitar with surf colors, I wanted 'surf' to be part of the name, as well, so I played on the Turser Surfmaster name - got to ride the surf, right? And the 6000? It was probably in the back of my mind from recently working with a Kramer Focus 6000. And there are obviously plenty of entrepreneurs out there on eBay who will make a guitar waterslide decal with anything you want.
So there's the story. It looks really cool and the vibrato is, um, interesting (sorry, I'm a Floyd guy). It's like a Bigsby in that you have to use it in a very subtle way and literally bring it back to a 'zero' point for it to remain in tune. The stock Artec pickups are cool, and the tone switches offer A LOT of different tone variations. Surf's up!
September 2009
VOX PHANTOM II
Well, I had an extra Bigsby laying around.
This guitar is tied very closely to my Fender EVH Wolfgang F guitar that I was building around the same time in the spring of 2009. I had purchased a Wolfgang-style body made for a Tune-O-Matic bridge, and thought that a Bigsby would look great on it. So I ordered a black Bigsby B500 tremolo and when I got the Wolfgang body, I realized it wouldn't work. There isn't enough room behind the bridge pickup on a Wolfgang for a Bigsby, so... I had an extra black Bigsby B500.
I began searching eBay for unusual (and cheap) guitar bodies that would work with a Bigsby and I found a guy who makes furniture and old Vox guitar bodies (Tom Bell @ Stonykill Creations in East Chatham, NY). I ordered an ash Phantom body routed for a single bridge humbucker and when I got it - I was shocked at how heavy the thing was. Anyway, my plan was to handpaint it white (just one thin coat of oil-based white, so the nice ash grain would come through) and use all black hardware - I thought that would look pretty cool.
As for the neck, I had tracked down a Fender Starcaster neck with the arrow headstock, and was thinking about using it on my Taxi guitar project, but the arrow looks perfect with the Phantom-style body and looks very close to the old Vox Phantoms 1 2. I also had a custom Vox Phantom II waterslide decal made for me.
Everything went fairly well, although I did have to route the neck pocket a bit deeper. Instead of using a neck plate, I drilled neck ferrules and attached the neck that way. I used black Planet Waves locking tuners, graphite Graph Tech string trees, black Schaller straplocks, a black chicken head knob, and the pickup is an amazing zebra Guitarforce Erupter (VH model - $125!) with a black metal cover. And like my DeArmond M-75T and Epiphone 335 Dot guitars, I used a a Schaller Roller TOM to go with the Bigsby (which isn't angled perfectly like a normal TOM - oh well - the intonation is fine).
Overall, it was a pretty quick project and it's an interesting guitar. Not the most comfortable to sit with, but plays and sounds well.
May 2009
UPDATE: February 2016
There have been two things about this guitar I've wanted to change for a while. First, that terrible angle of the roller Tune-O-Matic, and second, the pickup. I love the pickup, but I have wondered lately why in the heck did I put a $125 EVH pickup in there - I wanted to use it for another VH project (my Charvel EVH 1978 Prototype guitar) - minus the black cover. So I took care of them both. I filled and re-drilled the bottom TOM hole for a better angle (it's just about straight now), touched up the paint, and I replaced the GuitarForce Erupter zebra pickup with a GFS Gold Foil Ferrite humbucker. The super Vox looks even more vintage now, and still sounds really cool, albeit a lot less Van Halen cool.
Other out-of-tune guitars featuring a Bigsby vibrato (or some other prehistoric whammy system):
Duotone Standard
Fender Duo-Sonic
Fender Telecaster -Bigsby-
previous story back to the BEHIND THE GUITARS page next story