This model, which Gretsch advertised as having both acoustic and electric capabilities, was introduced by the manufacturer in 1955 as an option for acoustic players who were hesitant about going down the electric guitar path.
If you didn’t know everything in the guitar business in the early to mid 1900s, you were in good company—as so much was only just emerging. In 1936, Charlie Christian ripped open a can of electrical worms when he used his “pick-up unit” to soar over his otherwise acoustic band, establishing the guitar as a solo instrument and touching off a phenomenon in guitar manufacturing. Then, in 1948, Fred Gretsch Jr. returned to the helm at Gretsch—having briefly managed the company in the early ’40s—with a bold new vision that would meet the demands of guitarists wanting to plug in and turn up.
Gretsch began offering exciting custom finishes and all manner of gadgetry and gizmos, but not every guitarist was ready to take the electric plunge. They needed a guitar for the electric skeptic. So, in 1955, the Model 6199 “Convertible” was introduced. “Play it electric or play it acoustic and get top tone either way,” extols the 1955 Gretsch catalog. “That’s because instead of being built-in, the Gretsch Dynasonic pickup of this guitar is suspended clear of the top to allow full, free vibration.”
Fred Gretsch Jr. returned to the helm at Gretsch in 1942, with the goal of building electric models for the relatively nascent and growing industry.
Photo by Madison Thorn
But, as is so often the case when one tries to be all things to all people, the Convertible was not a big seller. It did, however, attract the attention of prominent jazz guitarist Sal Salvador, pictured proudly with his sunburst Convertible on his album covers. Salvador was a capable performer who valued a willingness to learn, teaching many students privately in New York at the height of his musical popularity.
“If you didn’t know everything in the guitar business in the 1950s, you were in good company.”
In 1956, one of Salvador’s students, 24-year-old Dan Duffy, was hired to oversee quality control at Gretsch. He wrote a book about his experience called Inside the Gretsch Factory 1957/1970. I managed to track down a copy, and found it written in all caps. I delighted myself in imagining Duffy shouting the entire book to someone. It’s really a fun little book. In it, Duffy describes the Convertible as a “good guitar” that had “a great sound but was prone to feedback.”
Duffy had his own learning experience trying to fix this problem. Installing soundposts had a minimal effect, so Duffy decided—in all his 24-year-old wisdom—to stuff it with fiberglass and test it out on a gig. “That night, I shook more than Elvis did,” writes Duffy. “Somehow I got it down my neck and was jumping out of my pants all night.... I brought it to work. I put the air pressure hose inside the guitar and blew it out. The next day, some of the workers complained they had a terrible itch all night. I said, ‘Me, too.’ I knew this was stupid when I was doing it.”
The Dynasonic pickup featured on the Gretsch Convertible, later dubbed the “Sal Salvador,” is suspended above the top plate of the guitar by a thin strip of wood.
Photo by Madison Thorn
By 1958, when the dust of Duffy’s debacle had settled, the Convertible had become so closely associated with Salvador that Gretsch just went ahead and renamed it the Sal Salvador model. Which brings us to ours: a 1961 Sal Salvador model in great cosmetic condition. It has obviously been well taken care of and is all original. Its remarkable acoustic projection does in fact make it a great choice for someone wanting to switch between plugged and unplugged jazz playing. The inviting C-shape neck feels comfy and the action is 2/32″ on the low side and 1/32″ (!) on the high side. Playing this guitar feels a little like floating on air.
One could easily engage with guitars only on this surface level: assessing the neck angle, the scale length, the condition of the finish, et cetera. But digging a little deeper and indulging our desire to learn guided us on a journey: from the earliest days of amplified instruments to the fine old jazz box laying in my lap today. Here’s hoping these guitars keep passing through our doors and telling us their stories, as long as we are willing to listen.
John 5 in 2019 with another of his flashy Teles.
I have to confess that this is a matter of heart for me because I’m a John 5 fan. I’m really fascinated with his playing style. This guy can play it all. No matter if he’s picking country swing or shredding death metal, his playing is very close to the traditional tones and techniques, but is always in his own style. Besides this, he’s a very humble guy with a great sense of humor, so I’m really happy to write a piece about his new signature Telecaster.
Fender worked very closely with John 5 on this model. At its core, this guitar is a standard HH Telecaster in arctic white—including the neck and fretboard—with red accents that include the binding, nut, knobs, pickups, and more. It’s a matter of taste, if you like this flashy aesthetic or not.
Let’s have a look at the basic features, so you have a shopping list if you want to build your own:
- alder body with HH pickup routings and binding
- maple neck with a medium C shape, 9.5" radius, and 22 narrow tall frets
- 42 mm synthetic bone nut
- string-through Tele bridge with humbucker pickup cutout and six block steel saddles
- sealed locking tuners
- 1-piece pickguard/control plate combination in mirrored chrome
- .009–.042 nickel-plated steel strings
What makes this guitar really stand out besides its appearance is the wiring, which I think is very special but also minimal. You can put this wiring inside any Telecaster, as long as it accepts two humbuckers. It consists of:
- two DiMarzio D Activator humbucker pickups
- master volume control (most likely 500k audio) without treble-bleed network
- Gibson-style 3-way pickup-selector toggle switch
- momentary kill switch
That’s all John 5 needs to sound like no one else, so let’s go through the pieces step by step and see what is under the hood.
Pickups
The DiMarzio D Activator humbuckers are passive mid-output pickups with ceramic magnets that have been available since 2006. In the John 5 Ghost Telecaster, both pickups are permanently wired to run as full humbuckers with both coils in series. For the wiring diagram, I used the DiMarzio color code: Green and bare wire are going to ground, black and white are connected and taped off, red is the hot output. If you want to use different humbuckers, you will have to transfer the colors of the wires using one of the numerous color code charts on the internet.
On the Ghost Tele, the pickups are red, but they are available in many different colors, too.
Pots
There is only a single master volume control, without a treble-bleed network. I haven’t had an opportunity to look at one of these guitars in person, and Fender has not released a wiring diagram, but I’m pretty sure they choose a 500k audio pot together with these pickups, so that’s what I also recommend using.
John 5 chose a Gibson-style “speed knob” in red, but any knob will work.
Selector Switch
The John 5 model uses a standard Gibson 3-way pickup-selector toggle switch (with a red tip, of course) mounted to the upper bout for swift pickup switching. It should be wired like this:
- bridge pickup as full humbucker alone
- both pickups as full humbuckers in parallel
- neck pickup as full humbucker alone
Kill Switch
Instead of a tone control, there is a kill switch beside the master volume pot (in red ... what else?) that Fender calls “arcade style.” And yes, it reminds me a lot of the hardware of the ’80s game consoles .... Space Invaders or Donkey Kong, anyone?
A kill switch is a momentary switch that is usually used for machine gun sounds or stuttering effects. (A momentary switch only cuts off your guitar’s signal against ground while being pressed and resumes normal sound when released.) For a kill switch, you only need a basic on/off 2-position switch. An SPST (single pole-single throw) switch is ideal. SPST switches have only two contacts on the bottom and the switch simply connects (or disconnects) these two terminals to each other when the switch is pressed.
“What makes this guitar really stand out besides its appearance is the wiring, which I think is very special but also minimal.”
Be sure to buy a good quality switch, and make sure it’s a momentary and not a latching type. The type you need is a “normally open” (off) switch. When you are pressing the switch, you make a connection between the two contacts. The switch returns to the off position when you release the button.
There are special high-quality, all-metal kill switches for guitars available. There are also models with an LED inside if you are looking for a cool look. But keep in mind that you will need a battery for the LED, plus space inside the guitar to install it.
Here we go for the wiring. As usual, I substituted all ground connections with the international symbol for ground to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring itself is very easy to do and is also a good beginner’s project.
Fig. 1
Illustration courtesy of singlecoil.com
That’s it! Next month, we will take a deep dive into something I received many email requests for, because it’s always confusing and not easy to understand: phase and polarity, and the difference between these two pickup parameters. So, stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Photo 1
When we talk about a vintage Gibson fretboard from the ’50s, we’re talking about the mystic Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) and its certain look and feel. Our Harley Benton doesn’t have a Brazilian rosewood fretboard. If it did, the fretboard material would cost more than the entire guitar because it’s so rare and limited today. Brazilian rosewood trade is restricted by CITES and almost no guitar companies use it anymore, except for some special custom shops. Other rosewoods or alternative woods are common substitutes.
Our Harley Benton fretboard is amaranth (better known as purpleheart), but sadly it was stained or painted black, giving the guitar a different look that’s closer to ebony rather than rosewood. So, there’s no way to get it brown or make it look like rosewood other than getting a new fretboard installed, which isn’t reasonable. Maybe it’s possible to get the black color out of the wood by using chemicals, but we don’t know what we’d find underneath, either. There could be another surprise waiting for us and all the work would be useless. On a budget guitar like this, we’ll have to live with this fretboard, loving it for what it is rather than hating it for what it’s not. The fretwork is surprisingly good and close to excellent, which is far from the industry standard in this price range.
The fretboard edges of well-played vintage guitars feel comfortable and round because the edges receive pressure from a player’s hand over decades.
But to show you the process of aging a fretboard, I chose a guitar with a rosewood fretboard, so you’ll know how to do this on a guitar with this type of fretboard if you want to. It’s not complicated so here we go.
Look at the slightly pale and lifeless color of the rosewood in Photo 1. It has a nice grain but is rather dull. Brazilian rosewood has a rich chocolate brown color, which clearly shows the grain of the wood.
Let’s make it less boring:
Use some fine steel wool or sanding pads to sand the rosewood. Use a soft brush afterwards to get the dust off.
Use some naphtha or alcohol and a cotton cloth to degrease the wood and get all the fine dust and dirt out of it.
Use masking tape to protect the fretboard edges and the binding, if your neck has one. You don’t need to cover the frets. They’re easy to clean after the process. Use a Q-tip and some Vaseline to protect the fretboard dots from the dye.
You need a chocolate brown wood dye and a small soft brush to apply it.
Photo 2
Some luthier supply stores offer special Brazilian rosewood dye in different shades of brown (Photo 2). I decided on a classic chocolate brown color on a solvent base for best results. Apply the dye thin and carefully and let it dry for some minutes.
Photo 3
Now look at the difference in Photo 3. It’s easy to see! If you want your fretboard darker, repeat the process until you like it. Cover your workspace with old newspapers and have an old cotton rag nearby just in case. This dye will stain everything permanently and you don’t want it on your clothes or your kitchen table. Let the fretboard dry for a day and take off the masking tape.
Use some very fine steel wool to polish the fretboard and the frets, to get any dye off the fret material easily. Use a soft brush to clean the fretboard afterwards.
Use some naphtha and a Q-tip to carefully clean the fretboard dots from any Vaseline leftovers.
Then use the amber color from the last part of this series [“DIY Relic’ing: Hardware Continued”] together with a fresh Q-tip and apply the amber color to the dots until you like the shade.
Now that we’ve made this rosewood fretboard look much closer to Brazilian rosewood, it’s time to mimic the touch and feel of it. Brazilian rosewood has a certain smell and feel that can be described as greasy compared to most other rosewoods. This is because of the oil content of this wood. We can’t naturally “oil up” other woods, but we can get close to this certain feel by waxing the fretboard rather than oiling it. This is also an easy process so let’s go for it.
Photo 4
Get a clear, hard wax for fretboards and a soft polishing brush (Photo 4). Apply a thin layer of wax to the fretboard using a cotton cloth to massage it into the wood.
Photo 5
Let it dry for some time, then wipe off any remaining excess wax and use the soft polishing brush to get this greasy look and shine on your fretboard, as seen in Photo 5.
So far, so good. We’ve taken care of the color and the feel of the fretboard but there is another haptic thing to consider when talking about vintage necks: the broken-in feeling of the fretboard edges. The fretboard edges of well-played vintage guitars feel comfortable and round because the edges receive pressure from a player’s hand over decades. This is not what is called “rolled fretboard edge,” which is a common custom shop option, but it goes in the same direction only to a much lesser degree.
Photo 6
To bring this typical broken-in feeling to your neck, you don’t need much: just a round metal bar and some time. You can do this to any guitar neck. I prefer to use a massive metal slide for pedal-steel players, but you can also use a bigger screwdriver or something similar. If possible, clamp down your guitar and use the steel bar in a 45-degree angle to move it along the edge of the fretboard, applying pressure (Photo 6). What we’re doing with this is not making a rolled edge but compressing fibres, which is exactly the natural process over time. Repeat moving the bar while applying pressure for some time and check the result until you like it. This is not done within a minute, so take your time. With the metal slide, I usually need 10-15 minutes for each edge until I like it, but this depends a lot on how hard your fretboard material is.
Photo 7
If you’re done with that part, excellent! You just finished your fretboard. Moving up the neck, the nut is our next task. The nut of our Harley Benton is pure white plastic, which not the best choice. If you want to keep it, you can sand it with some steel wool and apply some of the amber color with a Q-tip, followed with some of our mixture of dirt, dust, and ashes we used for the plastic buttons of the tuners [DIY Relic’ing Tuners, Part 2”]. Use your fingers to wipe on some of this mixture and you’re done. If you want to upgrade the nut, nylon is the historically correct material, and such nut blanks are available from numerous luthier supply stores. I decided to use an unbleached bone nut blank and make a new nut. Afterwards, I used some of the amber color and dust to make it look old (Photo 7).
Photo 8
Further up the neck is the cover for the truss rod adjustment screw with its mounting screw. Harley Benton decided to use a modern shape for it, which doesn’t look very good to me. The typical Gibson-style covers with their bell-like shape look much different, so I decided to swap the cover for such a model, modifying it for a flat bottom so it covers the whole opening for the truss rod (Photo 8). To make it look old, you can use the exact steps we used on the jack plate: break the shine with some steel wool, add some light scratches, wipe on some amber color on the white part of the cover, and then rub in some dust and dirt. You already know how to age screws, having done it many times before in the earlier parts of this ongoing project. If you need a refresher on our aging process for screws, refer back to “DIY Relic’ing: Break the Shine” for guidance.
Photo 9
The last thing we’ll do today is begin to work on the headstock of the guitar, which is often a delicate task. A lot of modders try to reshape the headstock so it will look like it’s from a vintage guitar, and, even worse, replace the headstock logo with a fake logo from another company. I would never do that. This project is about aging a guitar and not about making it an exact copy of a vintage original. Personally, I really like the headstock shape of the Harley Benton. It looks at least a little bit Gibson-like, and I also think the Harley Benton logo looks cool the way it is (Photo 9). So, aging it is very easy: Break the shine with some steel wool and wipe off the dust. Use a Q-tip and apply some layers of the amber color to the logo until you like the shade. Adding dings, dongs, and scratches will come later. In the next part of this project, we’ll take care of the backside of the neck and the body by cracking the lacquer to mimic some old nitro lacquer.
That’s it for now. We’re almost finished with this relic’ing project, but before we wrap it up, we’ll return to guitar mods in the next issue. We’ll take a deeper look at putting vintage parts into new electric guitars, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!
