Anyhow it was a success. Put a P-rail pickup in it. This pickup does P-90/Humbucker/Single coil, all with the triple shot pickup ring.
7 hours it took to do this. I'm frickn pooped from the stress. But it came out mint, save for the scratch behind the pickup, which was from a screw driver.
Dremeling the slot for the pickup was tough on the brain, but managed not to screw it up. Put on a REAL tailpiece, although it's a tad longer than that ugly POFS that Gretsch puts on the guitar, I wasn't sure if it would put enough pressure on the bridge, but it seems ok. Tail piece did not cover up the hole from the original wood strap button. So I cut the head off the wood strap button and glued it in the hole and it looks hardly noticeable in person.
Plugged into the Mesa Mark V the thing absolutely honks. There are two switches on the pickup ring with 2 positions, so that's a boat load of combos you can get with this thing.
Overall the guitar is decent. Of course the fools that painted it got paint all over the binding on the player side. The side that faces the floor is fine. But that can be expected with anything from China. The workers over there just don't give a crap about doing a perfect job. But I don't want to get into that. For $400???? Come on. Thing is unreal for $400 and it sounds 1/2 decent unplugged as well. I'm actually thinking of getting another one and doing the same thing again and using one for each tuning that we do in the non-baritone resonator realm.
I'd rather use beaters when we play out than 2-3k Nationals. But it's not like I want to baby the Nationals either, they're to be played. But there's a one that I wont take out of the house. Got to keep one perfect.
Anyhow, I'll post a video of the thing later on.
