Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Bigsby B6C Tailpiece Vibrato unit review and as an upgrade on Gretsch 5420T Electromatic guitars

 

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Bigsby B6C unit 

a great upgrade for Gretsch 5420T guitars

The Bigsby B6C - here I'll review the unit

Then I'll show you how I'll upgrade a 5420T Electromatic to a B6C -

here shown as supplied with the original type B60 Bigsby

The Bigsby B6C vibrato unit is often referred to as the 'V' type Vibrato as it has the V shaped cutout, some Gretsch guitars have the 'Cadillac V type' non-vibrato tailpiece which is different altogether.

I've installed a few of these B6C units on guitars as upgrades over the years as I prefer the design of them to the B60. 

The B6C unit used was purchased on-line from Thomann UK at £149 including shipping.

The B6C is a superior alloy to that used on the B6 unit fitted to the Korean and Chinese made Electromatics, although that unit works well, the B6C looks visually nicer and I think is a tonal improvement too.

The hinged mounting plate on the original B6 Korean version Bigsby is 4 screw and a different shape than the one used on the US made B6C - the B6C has a triangular shape plate with the strap button screw fitting through a central hole on the plate.

Fitting the new B6C is very easy with only a few basic tools required, which we'll cover in detail below. 

Tonally the new B6C unit I found improved the tone on the Fairlane blue 5420T I fitted it to and looks great.

You may find on installation that the spring is too tall and makes the lever arm sit higher than is comfortable. Shorter tension springs are available for you to set the arm height, avoid bending the arm as the arm should be swung back over the name on the Bigsby when putting in a case and if bent can scratch the top plate and mark it if it sits on the plate surface.

In all the B6C is a great unit and not massively expensive, visually it looks stylish and I much prefer it in appearance over the Bigsby B70 type that has the extra roller over the strings that puts more load on the bridge.

So lets move onto fitting a B6C as an upgrade part:

The upgrade work is quite simple, for tools you'll need a cordless drill, drill bits, dowel rod, screwdrivers, hex key for the strap button, masking tape, wood glue and touch in paint. Fit new strings to the guitar once the new B6C is installed.

If required you can colour match any repair dowel ends - acrylic car touch-in paints or Tamiya model paints I find work as they do not tend to react to the guitar finish and are easy to blend and apply. If colour matching, note that on drying or clear coating over, that this may darken the final colour shade. 

However, most of any repair areas are small and hard to see. The Tamiya series paints have many colour shades available including clear colours and tinted clear colours which you can see I have used on other projects like this Brian Setzer 6120 Hot Rod Truss Rod plate.

The Vanson Roller Tunamatic is a direct fit -

I use these on most of my Gretsch guitars.

I would advise fitting a roller tunamatic type bridge in the upgrade process as the roller saddles aid tuning stability, I use the Vanson type roller bridge but other makes are available. 

The Vanson is inexpensive and I have found them to perform well, look good and basically do the job nicely and I have used them on 6120 Hot Rods, 6120 TM and the 5420 Electromatics.

The standard blade saddle type Tunamatic tends to 'rock' or hang up on the strings when you use the Bigsby, the roller type unit prevents this. 

For extra sustain, once the guitar is adjusted and settled, you could turn some solid metal spacers to sit under the bridge thumbwheel adjusters so you have solid contacts between the bridge and the Tunamatic unit for better tone transfer.

Trial fit of the B6C rested on top of the original B60 unit -

note I have painted in the B6C recesses to the Fairlane Blue colour

  

If you are upgrading from the original type you will probably have to fill the holes left from the original unit that are not covered by the plate, this can be done with wooden cocktail sticks, round BBQ Skewer or wood dowel cut to length - the dowel can be matched to the old screw hole taper for a nicer fitting job.

The 5420T Silver Sparkle - Limited edition of 500 Guitars -

Also updated with a B6C and Vanson Bridge - in process here

On the Fairlane Blue 5420T guitar I blended some MGTF Trophy Blue with Platinum silver to make a touch in paint colour which I used on the wood dowels ends and also in the Bigsby plate recesses to colour match to the Fairlane blue for a classy finishing touch.

On the Fairlane 5420T I upgraded, the new B6C unit plate almost entirely covered the screw holes so there was minimal sight of any repairs.

The new B6C as fitted to the 5420T guitar -

Once installed the tip of the Bigsby should be about 1" 

high off the scratchplate - here the standard spring is installed - 

I replaced it with a shorter aftermarket spring to lower the arm

Once you are set with the new Bigsby and the tools to hand, the job is quite straightforward - and within around an hour's work you should be back into playing. 

In this view, I have used masking tape to give me a centre line

down the guitar body and also on the end of the body side panel -

centreing the line of the guitar on the strap button position.

Always measure, test fit and check before doing any drilling!!!

Once you have removed the old B60 unit you can fill the old holes with the dowel or BBQ skewer. On my job I put the dowels in just under the surface of the existing finish so it allowed me to put a few coats of the repair colour match on so it would fill to the surface of the existing finish and not stand out proud over the surface.

To mount the Bigsby I aligned and centred the unit off the fixed bridge centre line to the strap button hole as in the pictures  above.  

In this view of a 6120 Brian Setzer Hot Rod you can see the c. 6mm gap 

between the body top edge and the underside of the B6C plate clearly

at the binding edge of the guitar body

I placed the new unit on the guitar and adjusted the height of the top plate off the body at the end of the body - typically the height here from the underside of new B6C top plate surface to the top edge of the guitar body at the binding edge is around 5-6mm, as taken from a 6120 Brian Setzer Hot Rod guitar.** You can make a spacer of 5-6mm out of thin card to use to gauge the height at the body binding edge. The B6C can sit on here for test height and marking purposes.

**You may find this measurement may vary depending on the contour of the guitar top**

A simple block of postcard card laminated to around 6mm or 1/4" in Imperial can be placed at the top binding edge of the guitar to give you the space height the Bigsby top plate to the body at the strap button end as a guide.

The B6C in-filled detail with my colour match to the Fairlane Blue

Turn the guitar side on and the Bigsby top plate as you look down, should then be about straight or with a slight angle down towards the strap button. The 5-6mm height stated above seems to work I find. Check at the body binding edge. Measure and check before drilling.

Mark the new holes onto the masking tape and drill the new holes according to the mounting screws and fit the new B6C and you're about ready to reassemble.

I did the same B6C upgrade on this Gretsch 6118 Anniversary guitar -

this was originally a G Tailpiece equipped 6118 guitar

If you do find that the top panel is somewhat lower at the body end all is not necessarily lost, in this case you may need to use a longer spring in the holder, or a 'jacking up washer' under the tension spring to raise the height of the lever a fraction - but test the arm height with new strings first. This saves re-drilling holes.

The 5420T Silver Sparkle and Fairlane Blue guitars -

both upgraded with B6C units and Vanson Roller Bridges

The washer inserted under the tension spring will raise the height of the lever at the lever end if you find the lever arm too low in operational use.

So that's the upgrade process for fitting the B6C. I hope you have found this useful.

The modern Electromatic and Streamliner guitars are nice quality instruments that can be easily improved with new parts including pickups, bridge units and machine heads. 

 

Guitar Reviews 4U Quickguards Brian Setzer Gretsch 6120 Hot Rod Flames Truss Rod Plates

 

Guitar Reviews 4U adding Quickguards Flames Truss Rod Plates 

to the Gretsch 6120 Brian Setzer Hot Rod guitars 

Quickguards Truss Rod Cover Plates in Silver Sparkle

The new Brian Setzer Gretsch 6120 Hot Rod guitars look pretty amazing and I've upgraded mine with Pickguards as this make them easier to play I have found - recently I found a site called Quickguards in the USA offering a great variety of pickguards and truss rod plate covers. 

I could see the truss rod plates listed on the website would look great upgrades over the stock black and white sandwich type fitted as stock to the Hot Rod guitars. So I purchased some silver sparkle ones for my Hot Rod 6120s. The beauty of these guitars is that they can be easily upgraded to your own taste.

Back in 2015 the Brian Setzer Hot Rod models changed specification and lost the square Brian Setzer Hot Rod model label, replacing it with the engraved truss rood cover. 

I liked the 2015 truss rod cover idea, but I felt they should have also kept the square plate on the headstock too, the Hot Rod pickguard was also dropped around that time. I prefer a pickguard as I find you can use to brace the fingers for precise playing.

See my other article on adding a Gretsch Hot Rod guard to a modern era Hot Rod here:

The 2015 Hot Rod models dispensed with the metal Brian Setzer model plate -

The replacement was an engraved Truss Rod cover - they should have put both on!

The Quickguards Truss Rod covers in Silver Sparkle, appealed to me as I had already on my 2022 guardless guitars, added genuine Hot Rod Pickguards - see below.

Paint removed Gretsch Hot Rod pickguard on the Green Sparkle

Gretsch Hot Rod flames pickguard added to the Blueburst

I test painted Tamiya clear X-23 Blue and clear X-25 Green acrylic

 paint as test finishes onto a clear plastic carton lid -

The overlay of the lid gave me a test view of the final finish 

without having to put paint onto the Silver Sparkle guard at this stage

I ordered two of the silver sparkle plastic Truss Rod covers from Quickguards. They are busy people there and the guards took a while to be made and to arrive, but they are very good. When fitting, they advise to just tighten down the guard onto the surface of the guitar lightly and not to overdo the screw pressure.

The Hot Rod selection 2022, 2005 and 2022

The guards have round ferrules where the screws sit and if you tighten down too much on the plastic sheet material it can split. Just for guidance here.

The clear Green acrylic - I tinted some clear Acrylic with small amounts of Green.

This just toned down the silver slightly, without darkening the guard too much

On the guitars I used for this project - a 2022 Blueburst Hot Rod and a 2022 Extreme Coolant Green Sparkle Hot Rod, I laid the new unpainted guards over the originals to see how they looked against the paint finish on the guitars.

The finished guard has some contrast to the paint finish -

and looks better than the stock plain finish black and white guard -

the Hot Rod name and flames are not lost under a 'too dark' coated finish

To get the right shade on the guard, I first test painted onto a clear plastic lid some Tamiya Acrylic Clear X-25 Green and X-23 Clear Blue sample swatches and tried the guards under the samples to see how they looked.

The blue looked a bit too dark, so I left that for the moment, for the Green I tinted the green colour in small doses into clear Tamiya Acrylic to get the right amount of colour hue, without losing the transparency or having the Green colour too dark and overpowering the sparkle on the guard when painted on.

                                       The plain silver sparkle works nicely here -

The guard contrast is good against the blue, but guard could be blue tinted blue -

however, as this guitar has a silver pickguard fitted, this is now a matching 'set'.

On the Blueburst Hot Rod, I found that the clear blue used neat would be quite close to the guitar colour, so I left the guard on that guitar just silver for now, as below.

This really works nicely and matches the silver pickguard on the guitar

On the Extreme Coolant Green guard against the guitar finish, the silver looked very bright, so to tone it down I tinted some clear Tamiya Acrylic with some clear Green. 

As the Green is quite a strong colour, the idea was to have the clear Acrylic with a hint of added green to show off the silver but to tone down the harshness and darkness of neat Green clear tint.

The silver / Blue theme on the Blueburst 6120 guitar -

a difficult colour to photograph but to the eye is amazing!

Nice if it was blue sparkle!

The Green Sparkle finish on that guitar is quite vibrant so the toned down guard looked good.

As I have a clear guard on the Green Sparkle guitar, the toned down Truss Rod plate fits in nicely.

For the final touch, on the Green guard I clear coated the paint with X-22 Clear coat, giving the guard two coats to finish off, all the colours and clear coats were applied with a soft paint brush by hand.

Guitar Reviews 4U - D'Addario EXL125 9-46 Nickel Wound Guitar Strings review

 

D'Addario EXL125 9-46 Strings review

I fitted these strings to a Maple neck Custom Shop 59 Stratocaster that was giving me problems with the truss rod adjustment meaning I had to take off the neck more than on any other guitar I have owned to keep adjusting it.

So, to add a bit more load to the truss rod I looked at using slightly heavier strings than the 9-42 set i was using on that guitar.

So after some research, I tried these EXL125 'half heavier' set strings on the guitar in place of the 9-42 D'Addario set I had on it previously. It needed more load on the rod but not the extra load from a 10 set loading weight I guessed.

I use the standard D'Addario 9-42 strings on most of my other Stratocasters and they are great there with no issues, these EXL125 strings have slightly heavier bass strings as used on the 10-46 set, otherwise the top 3 strings of the EXL125 set are the same gauge and loading as the 9-42 set.

Checking out the string tension against the 10-46 set and the 9-42 set, these EXL125 strings sat in the middle of the range for string pull in pounds. So I thought that these were worth a try out to see if it would resolve the issue.

The EXL125 strings have done a great job and the slightly heavier bass strings has improved the guitar's sound (it has Custom Shop Fat 50's pickups fitted from the factory). The action is still very slick but there is more relief on the neck than on the 9-42 set.

Now the strings have settled and the guitar has been played for an hour, it sounds great, feels good and has sorted the loading issue on the truss rod and I haven't had to go back and adjust the string saddles or trem block height which is a bonus.

So a win all round.

Nice strings, great sound and work well. I have used this brand for 40 years!