Some Junkie Cosmonaut said:

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I bought one last week and got the notice it's been delivered...and I'm not back home until Monday.

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So just got through putting her through the paces for about an hour and a half or so and I'm in love.

I hesitated to post this because I'm expecting some grief from purists (which I understand) but this is the NGD thread and we have rules here after all.

After playing and falling in love with my strat and really start noticing/appreciating the difference in a "high end" guitar I started thinking about upgrading my Epi LP to a Gibson.

I kept coming back to this one because I got to play one not too long ago and I LOVED the neck/fretboard. They went with a different setup on this anniversary guitar. It's got room for my big hands and for some reason just fits perfectly in them...even better than my strat. I had looked at several in more classic bursts but kept coming back to this seafoam green top. It doesn't look seafoam at all to me (a good thing IMO), definitely darker, and it is absolutely gorgeous in person. Plus, I'm a sucker for green.

Honestly don't think the guy I bought it from (older gentleman) really ever played it. Still had the original factory strings on it. There's not even a pick scratch on it...it's absolutely mint and the nitro smell when I opened up the case...

Think I'll eventually (as soon as I find the time) take the GForce tuner off. Don't really dig it. Not going to lie though, it's not proper or whatever, but the boost switch is really cool and fun to play with.

I haven't taken any pics yet but this is off the reverb listing.

The '77 D28 I bought back in may finally came back home from the luthier today after a neck reset and some fret work all I can say is wow. What a sound

The '77 D28 I bought back in may finally came back home from the luthier today after a neck reset and some fret work all I can say is wow. What a sound

Went to a concert at Floore's Country Store on Friday.

Lead guitarist was rocking a Tele and Twin Reverb

So... it has been quite the journey with my new Tele. I bought this 60th Anniversary tele because I wanted a maple neck tele with a more modern profile (hate the U shape) and a nitro finish. I then wanted to install the bigsby on it with a set of SD Antiquities.

Took the guitar up to Neil to have it all installed because I didn't want to drill into the body, myself. I didn't realize the American series of Teles do not have the same specs/measurements of the vintage spec. So the pickup plate I had didn't fit. Fortunately, Neil spent about 45 minutes with me taking everything off to verify whether it would fit, so no holes drilled.

I then decided to just install the new pickups without the bigsby to make sure I like it before drilling the bigsby holes in the guitar. I also ordered a set of brass compensated saddles with slots, for the eventual Bigsby.

In the mean time, I hated all the lacquer build-up on the sides of the frets. I guess they install the frets before applying the lacquer, then just remove from the tops of the frets, but not the sides of the frets. I spent about 3 hours taping my neck up, using a small flathead screw driver as a chisel to remove the lacquer, and using my dremel tool with the polish wheel to buff everything back up. Took forever, but finally got that finished and really like the result. I no longer can feel the lacquer on my fingers when touching the frets.

Yesterday, i decided I would try to install my new pickups and saddles. However, after taking out all the electronics the last owner installed (which was a bunch of ridiculous crap for a noiseless setup), I realized that the SD Antiquities only came with what I needed to install directly into the body. I guess this is the vintage way, versus the modern way of screws through the pickguard. I decided to go ahead and try screwing them in. However, I didn't have a drill to begin the holes, so it took a lot of torque to screw them into the body. These screws they give you are also "antiqued", which means rust. The mixture of the torque and rust caused one of my screws to snap in half, after having screwed in about 1/3 of it. I had to spend the next 30 minutes with a pair of plyers, trying to get the rest of the screw out of the body.

After finally getting that out, I spent about 2 hours driving around town to find a screw. Apparently, Lowes and Home Depot don't stock any screws that would work. Finally was able to get some help from the guitar tech at Guitar Center who had a box filled with screws. He just gave me 2 new ones to install directly into the body, and another 2 larger ones that would work for installing in the pickguard.

Just spent the last 3 hours rewiring the entire electronics assembly for a '53 wiring and installing my new pickups. I also installed the new brass saddles which work very well and properly intonate. Now this thing looks and sounds more like a Blackguard Tele. I really do dig it, and has a much different character compared to my #1 tele. However, i am always reminded how amazing my #1 is when I pick it back up after playing another guitar for a while.

Next steps will be enjoying this for a while, but ultimately finding some solution for the bridge, so I can install a bigsby. That may require me to dremel slots on the back of the bridge. I also prefer vintage style tuners, but they don't really fit modern American Series guitars. I'm gonna have to do some research for figure that out.

TLDR: Did a bunch of crap to my new tele to make it closer to a Blackguard, and taking a while to decide whether I will install the bigsby.