Guitar Reviews 4U - Gretsch 5420T Fairlane Blue upgrades you can do - improve your Gretsch 5420T with these easy revisions!

 Guitar Reviews 4U - Gretsch 5420T Fairlane Blue upgrades

Gretsch 5420T Fairlane Blue easy but worthwhile upgrades -

Hardware upgrades for your 5420T guitar

The purchase price leaves you a good guitar base

to upgrade with higher quality hardware

The Gretsch 5420 guitars are nicely made guitars for the price ticket and I've owned a few of them over the years! Starting with a 5120 in Orange that I upgraded and then a couple of 5122's, they offer you a great basic platform to personalise. I now own a couple of 5420T guitars, a Fairlane Blue Korean 2016 guitar and a Chinese made 2023 2 Tone Anniversary Green guitar.

There are great things about these guitars, with great quality construction they are not big ticket prices to buy, giving you plenty of scope to add upgrade hardware later or right away.

The hardware on these guitars is adequate, but can be easily improved, used examples of the 5420T guitars for example can often be picked up for reasonable deal prices and also one-owner guitars are often found for sale where they have not been set up.

Here the owner often new to playing quickly gives up on them sadly and the dream of playing, all these situations I found on these used guitars are mostly easy fixes. If only the new players knew, they could easily make their guitars more friendly to play.

A nice Stray Cats pin badge brightens up this

G5420T Truss Rod Cover Plate

We'll start with a few areas to improve  that will give instant improvement - such as the Bigsby, Tunamatic Bridge & Tuners. Our main example is a 2016 Korean made 5420T in Fairlane Blue and I'll include some pictures of a 5420T Chinese made 'Anniversary' guitar I've also upgraded. 

G5420T guitars upgraded and featured in this article

An instant improvement on the 5420T has to be the machine heads. The ones fitted work but are easily replaced with these Wilkinson WJ45 units. These Kluson style WJ45 units have better gearing and can be greased as I did before fitting them.

 Wilkinson WJ45 Machinehead upgrade

I used masking tape placed alongside the old units so the new ones would follow the same placing. The old holes were filled using cocktail stick cut into short length pegs which were glued with PVA wood glue and then the peg glue when dry paint matched.

 Vanson Roller Saddle Tunamatic Bridge

The Roller Saddle Bridge drops on as a unit, I've fitted this make of Bridge on six or more Gretsch guitars over the last 12 plus years. They are simple and inexpensive and do a great job.

 Bigsby B6C unit installation

Thr Bigsby B60 supplied on the 5420T can be upgraded with the B6C, which I've done on 4 5420T's over the years. 

Bigsby B6C in-filled with matched Fairlane Blue paint

On the Fairlane Blue guitar I in-filled the B6 details with colour matched acrylic auto touch-in paint mixed by hand from MG Trophy Blue and MG Platinum Silver to the correct shade.

 B6C and Roller Bridge installed

The B6C looks such a good unit, it makes an obvious visual improvement, as it also does to the sustain and tone of the guitar.

Wilkinson WJ45 Machine Heads

 Bush added to the WJ45 unit for support

Gotoh SG381 locking machine heads 

Used on the Brian Setzer guitars

Gotoh SG381 Dimensions

 Straplocks were added to the 5420T 'Anniversary"

The Schaller Straplocks fitted to the Green 5420T guitar when the wood was damaged removing the old strap button posts, on the Chinese 5420T, the posts are left hand threaded into the wood, not right hand threaded as on the Korean and Japan guitars.

The straplocks are more convenient as they are quicker to put on or remove the guitar strap.

 G6118T Anniversary Plate

Plate part number

The Green 5420T in the 'Anniversary' 2-tone green looks great with this Gretsch Anniversary plate on the head stock. It adds the finishing touch to the head. I have a choice of Gotoh or Wilkinson machine heads to fit to the Green 5420T. 

 Anniversary Plate on the 5420T

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Paint repairs - Gretsch G5420T examples shown

 

Guitar Reviews 4U Gretsch Paint repairs - Gretsch G5420T examples shown

Upgrading a guitar can leave you with new areas to paint match -

this is often tricky for existing metallic colours like this Fairlane Blue

So, you've upgraded some parts on your Gretsch guitar but this leaves you with a situation to overcome - that of matching repair paint to the original colour.

In this review, I'll show you how to match Gretsch colours to Fairlane Blue and to the Anniversary Green used on the 5420T guitars for the repairs.

Obtaining a perfect match to paints can be expensive for the amount needed and often the amount of paint needed is very small. 

On the 5420T in Fairlane Blue, I upgraded the open back machine heads to closed back Wilkinson WJ45 units you can see this review here on how I did that job. This left me with bare wood plug ends to disguise to the original paint colour.

Blue mix in a Bigsby B6C unit I did -

Acrylic car touch-in paint used

After drilling the new holes for the replacement Wilkinson units I plugged the original screw holes that were now not usable with hardwood cocktail sticks. Small wood plug pieces were glued in to flush level and left to dry.

Once I fitted the new machine heads, I then had the bare wood to cover. In this case I already had some car touch-in paints to hand to use but not a direct match, this was a Trophy blue acrylic paint for a 2004 MGTF car. I find the car acrylic touch-in paints are easy to use and dry quickly, working with cured poly and epoxy paint and cellulose.

Touched in Fairlane Blue on my 5420T

after fitting Wilkinson Machine Heads

I used a couple of drops of clear acrylic finish in the mixing palette and then toned this with the MG TF blue a small amount at a time, in this fashion you increase the colour depth in the clear carrier gradually until it matches. Its done a pretty good job here. 

Dark Green infilled B6C detail on my Gretsch 5420T upgrade

I upgraded my 5420t 2 tone Anniversary Green 5420T with a Bigsby B6C and you can read the story here. During this job also I replaced the strap buttons with strap locks and had to do a reinforcing repair to the strap button area nearest the neck which meant I needed to do repaint areas to chipped paint. 

My 1958 Cadillac Versailles Green Dietzler paints match!

for my Gretsch 5420T 2 tone Anniversary 5420T

Once I had done the repair to the inside of the body of the green 5420T guitar, I was left with an area where the paint had chipped away. The colour I needed I found was from Dietzler paints and although I did find some Du Pont cross reference, it would likely be tricky to get a pure match to the darker green on the 5420T. So I mixed my own by eye to suit.

5420T Versailles Green repair around the strap button area -

you can't see the new paint - so a successful job done

The Dietzler 1958 Cadillac paint chips 

On this darker green match for the 5420T, I noticed that the Versailles Green was a 'smoky' looking green and rather than just use a dark Racing Green type of shade and lighten it, I would blend up to the green shade I wanted.

The Versailles Green has 'yellow' tone to it rather than some of the green shades which have more of a  'Blue' tint to them.

I noted that a Ferguson Tractor Grey would be a good carrier base to tint up, so found a Ferguson T20 Grey which was a mid grey and could be tinted up with a dark green, for this I Green I used a Fraser Green I had modified the shade of slightly to paint garden bench ends. 

Both of these shades are UN1263 Synthetic Resin paint base used in vehicle restoration, the type it is also referred to as semi-cellulose in some places. 

For the final paint match, I put a small amount of the Ferguson Grey into a mixing palette and then using the Fraser Green, added small amounts into the Grey and mixed it around with a brush.

I checked the paint on a brush by eye to the Gretsch paint, until it matched and then painted in the repair areas on the guitar.

Once the paint had dried and hardened, after about 2 days, I carefully flatted the proud paint back to the level of the original paint using 1200grit wet and dry paper with water and washing up liquid to get the blend of paint levels. 

Once to level and dried, I gently polished the repair area with Farecla G3 rubbing compound to remove any surface swirl scratches and then used a clear autoglym resin polish to finish it off.

As you can see here, the paint match is invisible which is the intention! 

Paint matching to original paints can be done at home, but can be more challenging with some sparkle and candy finishes.

For the 5420T with clear tint coats like the Orange, I would use a Tamiya X-26 Orange Clear tinted into Tamiya Clear Coat. These paints are shown below

X26 Clear Orange and X22 Clear Coat acrylic paints