CUSTOMS CHECK

Regarding your recent cover story about customising your guitar, here’s what I did. And, more recently, what I didn’t do, despite an almost obsessional yearning…

The guitar in question is the Gibson RD77 Artist. I bought it in 1978 and, at the time, it was a radical off-piste moment for Gibson with a stunning shape and balance, and a ridiculous palette of tone and dynamics thanks to a collaboration with Dr Rob Moog.

When the ’79 RD Models were released, they included the tuneable tailpiece. They also restored the neck length to Gibson’s traditional 24-and-a-bit inches from the ’77’s longer and Fender-ish 25.5 inches. So my upgrade gave me a bit of tuneability, without destroying tone or playability.

More recently, I nearly replaced the bridge with a Fishman piezo-acoustic bridge to

add an acoustic sound to my beloved RD. I had been enthralled by John Petrucci’s live performances on his Music Man signature instruments with the piezo mod. The guitar is already active/powered, so it felt like it made sense. But when I mentioned the idea to my local guitar tech guy, he said,“It may sound great, but you are totally destroying the guitar’s value. For the money you’ll save by not doing it, buy a decent JP solid guitar with it built-in.”

So I didn’t do it. On the other hand, I have a 1971 ES-175 fitted with a pre-’57 pre-PAF P-90 custom-wired on the neck. It’s the most gorgeous-sounding jazz box you’ve ever heard. And it makes the guitar even rarer and more valuable. Swings and roundabouts. Brian Towell, via email Thanks for your email, Brian, as it draws attention to one of the biggest dilemmas with customisation: that changing hardware can knock a few quid off your guitar’s value. You could obviously confine yourself to reversible mods. Another strategy, if you are planning to make more radical mods, is to start with a relatively inexpensive ‘chassis’ for your modding and simply accept any depreciation caused by non-reversible mods is a fair price to pay for achieving your dream spec. However, as your experience shows, making permanent changes to a valuable vintage instrument is a tougher call. Given that the RD is relatively rare and packed with factory ‘mods’ already, we reckon you made the right decision.