Fitting A Bigsby Tailpiece To My ES-330 (w/@Montysguitarsandpickups)

I first became aware of the Gibson ES-330 when I saw @GuitarDotCom's video of @WeAreLittleBarrie's 1962 ES-330 - and I absolutely fell in love with how it sounds. Barrie is a killer player of course, but his guitar really sings too. So I've tweaked my guitar (to my ears, at least!) to sound as close to his as possible. This has also recently involved fitting a set of Wizz P90s, which have been a revelation.

But there's one other part of Barrie's guitar that I thought brought it to life...the Bigsby. Coincidentally, I've had a thinline-spec Bigsby knocking about here for a few years now that I've always been tempted to fit to it...but have chickened out. I tried fitting a Bigsby once before and royally ballsed it up.

Eventually though, curiosity got the better of me - but I'd learned my lesson in not attempting invasive guitar mods myself(!) so I decided to take it to the legendary Matt Gleeson of @Montysguitarsandpickups to perform the surgery. He's the man for pretty much any job, at the end of the day...!

So on 29 February 2024, I spent a couple of hours with Matt doing the work, and this video documents the semi-delicate process of fitting a hulking chunk of metal to a thinline.

What do you think? Was it a good choice to fit it? Comment below!

Guitar is a Gibson ES-330 '61 VOS Reissue w/ Wizz P90s. Amp is a Vajra JTM45 clone running into a Zilla Studio Pro 2x12 cabinet loaded with Celestion AlNiCo Gold & G12M Heritage Greenback speakers. Track recorded through the Greenback with a '70s Sennheiser MD441 mic. Spring reverb is a Dr Z Z-Verb unit.

jp@joeperkins.co.uk
Vector images by freepik.com

Видео Fitting A Bigsby Tailpiece To My ES-330 (w/@Montysguitarsandpickups) канала Joe Perkins