The Steel Guitar Forum

Last night I caught the last segment of the three part premier of (WTTW-Television-Chicago)"SoundStage" featuring "Tom Petty and the Heart-Breakers" For the last tune his guitarist Mike Campbell was playing what appeared to be a Bigsby electric Spanish guitar-Does anybody know if he owns an original one or if this could have been one of the few "Bigsbys" that Gretsch made after they aquired the name from Ted McCarty?<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by PAUL WARNIK on 13 July 2003 at 07:44 AM.]</p></FONT>

Just curious----is this a "Merle Travis" style guitar with the big scrolled headstock? Are there any other styles of Bigsby Spanish guitars? Just educating myself.

I've seen Merle Travis with his original solid body Bigsby, his Martin acc. w/Bigsby neck/headstock, and a hollow body/jazz style w/cutaway Bigsby guitar.

I got to talk to my steel playing friend T.C.Furlong who did sound engineering for the show-He saw the guitar among the vast array of vintage gear that Petty's band had there-He said the Bigsby appeared to be quite old and probably an original-It was the same body shape (Mickey-Mouse Ear bass side cutaway) as Hank Garland is shown with on Page-10 AMERICAN GUITARS-WHEELER

A local music shop here in Sydney had a Bigsby spanish a few years ago. They may still have it as I believe it was a show piece.

Graham

Guitar Center in Hollywood has another Bigsby reissue. (one of the new ones made by Gretsch?). This one is a double, pointed cutaway with a flat top, two pick-ups, vibrola bar, flat birdseye maple-cap top over what looked like a chambered maple body, bound neck with bow-tie position blocks. I had a chance to play it through an amp. (Fender Custom Shop "Two-tone model)Apart from a noisy toggle switch, it sounded and played great. Nice light resonant body. Those pick-ups have a unique tone. The single master volume and tone controls were knurled tele style. The headstock had the classic Bigsby shape with the logo reading crossways like Merele Travis' solid body. I think this is the model that Billy Byrd had? Good workmanship and quality. I'm no expert, but it looks to be a pretty accurate repro. Couldn't find any markings for country of origin? The sales guys didn't know much about it. Sticker price was about $2300.00.
On another note: the summer Fender Frontline
catalog has a photo of a new Jimmy Bryant Model Tele!
Haere Mai,
Steve H.

I'm curious about the PU's on those reissues ( by Gretsch ), wonder how they are compared to the originals. Someone was selling one of these guitars on ebay few months back, the PU's looked the same, but I couldn't tell if the covers were actually cast aluminium or some other material. When Gretsch bought Bigsby, did the inventory include some guitar PU's?

Jussi-when Gretsch bought out Bigsby-there was nothing left for steel guitar and likely nothing left for Spanish guitar either-I got all that back around 1992-all the spanish guitar stuff went to Dave Westerbeke-there were some standard guitar magnets but no other parts for standard guitar pickups

Yeah Paul, that's what I thought. So, now I wonder if the Japanese have actually gotten around and made exact copies of those PU's ( that's where these guitars are made I believe??? )