I finally got around to putting a period correct pickguard on my 1952/3 Constellation (6030). I found exactly the pickguard I needed at Pickguard Planet. According to the website it was made from an original Gretsch template. It is 4 ply and is in the correct tortoise shell color. The missing original bracket only had one screw hole and nearly every other bracket I could find had two holes. I didn't want to put another hole in the guitar and finally found a chrome one with one hole. I soaked it in muriatic acid for 24 hours, and it appeared to be nickel on brass. I got a little gold electroplating kit on Etsy and successfully plated it in 14K gold.
The gold color was slightly off compared to the other hardware so I tried plating it again with a 24K solution. There wasn't any noticable difference so I went ahead and carefully drilled and mounted the guard without screwing it up. Since the gold bracket is not adjacent to the other gold parts, it looks fine and not too shiny. The binding is in great shape. The guitar has a barely worn finish. It had a perfect neck reset and a refret, also. It is loud as hell with flatwounds. I am a happy camper!
Looks very nice indeed. The pickguard looks great as well as the mounting.. I had a 50s Roger that had a pickguard from what I believe was exactly the same material. Please allow me some questions. You mention replating it with a 24K solution. Can you please tell me what brand/type solution that is, that you used the 2nd attempt.
The other question concerns your strings. You state they are flatwounds and I see some bronze/brass color on them. What brand/type/gauge are you using? I have a Gretsch G400 but with a floater humbucker, and use Galli flats, but may be there are other brands out there? Do you have little finger noise as well?
The strings are Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Swing (JS112) . The plain steel strings have a brass coating, however it gradually wears off but prolongs the life of the string I guess. They have very low finger noise. Here is a link to a previous post about them Thomastik-Infeld tinplated strings?
The gold plating kit I got from an Etsy dealer. beckerelectronics - Etsy . The kit came with a 14K gold electroplating solution, I then ordered another jar (4oz) of 24K for (ouch) $40 or so, to no avail. Yes, I spent way too much money on this project lol, but now I can electroplate stuff. I found a shallow glass ashtray to use to electroplate the bracket and screws, and was able to rebottle 80% of it for future use. There is also a brush on method which would work well an a larger piece like a tailpiece. The tough part is getting the gold tones to match up with existing gold tones. There are also rose gold shades available, etc. It depends on what other metals are in the mix.
I bought this guitar stock and did a considerable amount of work to it to make it a very good instrument for jazz and fingerstyle:
Gotoh Tuners are a big improvement over stock - they operate so...
I agree, it is fun stuff. I’m a bit surprised though that with your background and experience it isn’t all old hat to you. Not a criticism, just an observation. Don’t they teach this stuff at jazz...
I’ve been working out of that Swing and Big Band guitar book. Been playing blues and rhythm changes in all the inversions of those shells every day. Doing approach chords where I can. Doing some...
On most of my guitars i can go about 1mm for the high E and a little higher (1.2 - 1.5mm) on the low E. The high E either a .014 or .013, low E .052. Lower than that feels awkward.
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Ibanez AG75
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