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a "new" guitar for the blueshawk
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Because I have rheumatoid arthritis I am increasingly troubled by problems with my hands and wrists. I need a guitar that is -
 | able to produce acoustic tones - 'cos some of the time I can't play an acoustic - strings too heavy / action too high - see why here |
| light-weight |
| able to sound good with light gauge strings - good tone and powerful sound |
| capable of working well with low action - no string rattle or binding up when applying big bends |
| able to produce a wide range of convincing tones for the range of music I play |
This is a pretty tall order - the Blueshawk does all of these, except the acoustic tones.
I bought a Tele Thinline in 2003 - just because I liked it, and added a Seymour Duncan Little '59 in the bridge. Later in 2003 I also bought a Nashville Power Tele - which includes a Fishman Power piezo bridge - I like Teles, it had a piezo bridge and was an amazing bargain. Unfortunately it was incredibly heavy, and although the acoustic (and other) tone was good, I didn't enjoy the "power lifting" involved in playing it.
It took a while to summon up the courage, but in January I started to think about the possibility of taking the Fishman Power bridge out of the Nashville, and putting it in the Thinline. This was not straightforward because the two guitars had different kinds of bridge - an "ashtray" on the Thinline, a chunky six saddle job on the Nashville.  |
The underside of the Power bridge also has a printed circuit board where the individual piezo saddle elements terminate. I also needed to transfer much of the Nashville's control circuitry - the pre-amp for the piezo pickups, the piggy-back tone/volume for the magnetic pickups, the piezo volume control and the fancy stereo jack socket which switches the pre-amp on/off.After some very careful measuring, note-taking, and convincing myself that I could back-track at any point, I stripped down the Thinline and the Nashville. I had a fair bit of woodwork to do on the Thinline body -
I swapped over pickups where necessary, transferred and rebuilt the control electronics and gave the whole guitar a complete setup. Result - a great hybrid guitarOne of the problems with the resulting guitar was that to change the battery that powers the Fishman pre-amp you had to remove the scratch plate, which in turn meant slackening or removing the strings. |  |
Around this time Dave at Ridgeway Guitars offered to do some work for me in return for me having provided to him detailed measurements from my Blueshawk. I didn't need another guitar, but a custom lightweight body for my Thinline seemed highly desirable. I'd long wanted a swamp ash bodied guitar because it is such a light wood. However swamp ash is not particularly attractive so it needed to be combined with a maple top - although I didn't want anything with very fancy figuring. I also like edge bound Teles, but dislike the way a Tele digs into your ribs - so the body also needed a tummy cut. An accessible battery box was an essential. Dave set to work and documented the construction with over 100 photographs -
 swamp ash blank |  creating acoustic chambers |  finishing the f-hole |  battery cavity & cover |  recessed neck plate |
I am absolutely delighted with the results - a uniquely beautiful, flexible and playable guitar. The acoustic tones from the piezo bridge are much better than they were in the the Nashville - more transparent and woody sounding - no doubt aided by the gigantic acoustic cavities Dave has provided. An unexpected benefit is that the guitar produces a tone that is a dead ringer for Pete Green's classic "out-of-phase" tone. All this, and no swapping guitars between songs, no broken back and no sore fingers and wrists. Fantastic!
