A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

After amazing luck at GC Used with both the Agile Harm 1 and Ibanez AS73 a little over a week ago, I haven't played my other guitars much. I just love the tones I'm getting out of these 2, especially the Harm. The Harm seems perfectly voiced for some of the music I'm working out right now, so I couldn't be happier. Almost. The styles I'm working with use some bending. I can get some of that with neck bends, but really want more, and don't want to push that too hard with a semi-hollow anyway. I wouldn't want to cause the need for a neck reset just chasing a feeling. I think neck bends are safer with bolt-on necks for some reason.

So I've been thinking these two guitars (in all their semi-hollow goodness) should get tremolos or vibratos or whammys or whatever the kids are calling them these days. I'm not a big fan of a Bigsby because that operation is not reversible without big scars. But I do have a guitar with a Duesenberg Les Trem II, and really like it. The LTII replaces a Gibson style stop tailpiece without any modifications to the guitar. Even better, I find it very smooth and easily adjusted. It's just a very usable whammy for my needs.

The only problem is availability for us lefties, I had to do some looking. Turns out I could get a couple of them directly from Duesenberg cheaper than most other sources. I ordered 2. I still paid a small premium for not buying from Thomann, but that's a different story. So I have 2 Les Trem II units on the way.

I think the coolest aspect is that I can keep the original stop tailpieces of the guitars that get them, and swap these trems around at will. I saw GFS has a similarly easily installed trem, but they don't make lefties or I would have tried theirs.

Nice guitars,

I saw a good vid where bigsby vs no-bigsby on a 335 semihollow were compared. The bigsby did change the 335's tone significantly. Bigsby 335 had less of a sudden
attack, and the entire tone seemed softer and rounded off vs hardtail which had more sudden attack and fuller tone.

Saw another video with Deusenberg vs No Deusenberg. The change in tone was almost imperceptible. Perhaps Deusenberg guitar become a hair brighter.

I gotta say the Bigsby effected tone was still a great tone. Reminded me of a Jazzier or RnB tone. But it made me think of getting a Deusenberg for my incoming es333.