Any guitar nerds here?

[Mark]

Hi everyone,

I've got this Gretsch guitar that I like a lot. It sounds ok, could probably use some better pickups, but unless you really pump up the overdrive then it sounds pretty clean. The worst part about it is that it just won't stay in tune, and I think the culprit is this generic Bigsby "licensed" wigglestick. I can get the guitar in tune, but the second that thing gets touched it goes out of tune.

I've locked down Floyd Rose's before, but I can't seem to see an easy/good way to do it with this one. The only thing that I could think is that I could remove the spring from under the bar and then just have the tension of the strings hold it down, but I can't seem to find a wrench that'll hold the nut and fit inbetween the coils on the spring.

Anyone done this before? Any advice?

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_4bf9tmqvjjY/S3rclBvwGpI/AAAAAAABNo0/DhWNfPvOCJ0/s800/IMG_3224.JPG

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_4bf9tmqvjjY/S3rclawHSEI/AAAAAAABNo8/2tVhIB3A5Vk/s800/IMG_3225.JPG

[aussie]

sorry i cant help, but i couldnt help noticing that we have the same glasses hahaha. nice :cool:

[Breeze]

Beautiful guitar! I wish I could help, but I play a stock Taylor acoustic. How much did you get that for?

[Mark]

I paid about 500 bucks for it, and for a reason. I had to intonate the whole thing when I got it, it was a total mess.

I ended up filing down the nut a bit so that the strings don't bind on it, and I removed that tremolo and ended up putting a 9/16th socket in place of the spring to lock down the tremolo. Ha! totally works! It actually stays in tune now.

I think the next thing I'm going to do is chuck those pickups, they sound awful.

[sharond31]

Nope, never did.
By the way the guitar is very gorgeous. You are lucky man.

[mashang]

Nice Guitar,
i have a Jackson, with EMG pickups (custom installed) sounds brutal.

with reference to your tuning problem, here are the usual culprits
1. Neck is bent, have a look down the neck and see if all is in line
2. Bridge is bent, or needs re aligning
3. Machine heads are gone,

also how much string is excess on the machine heads, silly question but has your strings been cut down, so basically there is not much excess on the machine heads?

if you are looking for good pickups i would recommend Seymour Duncan's, depending on what sound you want to go for, but these generally good on clean and can get really dirty if you want it to