AWESOME!! Thanks for this! I do wish you were a bit closer, but I think (hope) I can work it out the same way on my Falcon. I did some more work on my Black Beauty and now have it so the neck pickup is independent and the middle pickup pairs with the bridge. Still not what I want, but ok for now. One thing I've noticed is that the frets on this guitar are SO much smoother than the more recent purchases. I'm thinking that some of these guitars are leaving the "factory" so fast that GG is not taking the time to take care of the things that they got famous for. like silky smooth SS frets. I got a FFMN, and the frets on that are so bad I'm afraid of just grinding through any strings I put on it. The SS frets take a LOT of extra work because they are so hard, but hopefully when I get it done I'll never have to do the same guitar again. Great job on the classic CULT song for your intro!!
You're welcome, always glad to help if I can, and thank you, I appreciate it, love me some CULT! Yeah, as I said, I wish I knew this was a problem for everyone before fixing mine, I would have put the camera closer. If you're on a phone, I think you can pinch to zoom in. On a TV it might be big enough. Like I said, if you need any further instruction, just let me know. Glad to hear you're making progress on the Black Beauty, I'm not sure how that guitar is wired, but in order to be able to control each pickup independently, you either need a special 3 way switch with an extra terminal(not sure if Firefly used one, I'll guess probably not) or you'd need each pickup lead to go to an independent volume pot and then from the pots to the switch in the way you have it now, then use the volumes to blend the two connected pickups. If they wired that guitar like they wired the hollow body, they went from pickup to switch, then switch to volume, which makes it impossible to have independent volume controls, it needs to be the other way. If that's the case, it'll be a bit more soldering you'll have to do, and you'll probably need some additional wire to go from pots to switch. As for the frets, thank you for sharing your experiences, you're probably right. I figured something had to be up there cause everyone's always raving about stainless steel frets (well, almost everyone), Firefly claimed to me that they'll do a better job so we'll see. Unfortunately this is my first experience with stainless steel frets so I'm out of my element currently, as far as dealing with them. Any good tips for smoothing them out? As I said in the video, I got them playable now, but I'm not as impressed as most people seem to be, so I'm assuming there's a bit of room for further improvement.
@@JROID For right now I'm using an OLD knife sharpening stone for leveling the frets, and then just wearing out some small files for crowning and then lots of grits of sandpaper for polishing. I want to order some diamond sharpening tools, but man those are expensive...
@@algoribbon9992 Okay, so not really any different than nickel frets, just more work initially for less work later on. Thanks for the info! And yeah, I'm sure diamond tools are great, but if they're expensive, you'd probably have to do a lot of frets for them to be worth it. I tend to operate on the budget side nowadays, I get more fun out of the less expensive stuff.
I don't have a Firefly... i have a Fame BigBoy... it had exactly the same issues. I guess it comes from the same Factory as the Firefly Guitars. The One and Only thing i did not do is the rewiring... i suck at soldering. I also got rid of the original Nut and got myself a TUSQ Nut... which solved any tuning issues i had. Here in Germany we have "MusicStore" and "Thomann" as the big brands. Normally i would've gone the Harley Benton route which are better in my Opinion... but they have different wiring and no Coil Split, which i wanted because of the obvious Gretsch similarities. One thing i'm gonna replace is the Pickups though. I want my Filtertrons in there it makes it a little more "Gretschy".
@@HowlinAndyDE Hadn't heard of that brand before, pretty nice looking website and guitars, definitely a lot more info than Firefly. I also looked at Harley Benton before getting this Firefly, but shipping made it more than I wanted to pay, definitely a nice looking guitar though. And I'd be curious to hear a comparison between these pickups and actual filtertrons. It's unlikely I'll ever actually get to do that myself though, so if you replace yours, let me know what you think of them compared to the stock ones. As for soldering, you just have to practice, at first it seems difficult, I did some horrible soldering when I first started learning, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Just practice on some old pots until you make solid, good looking connections. Lastly, thank you, glad you liked the sound, these days I'm almost exclusively using Amplitube/Tonex, in this video it was a Fender Bassman model for dirty, and a Fender Deluxe model for clean.
Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate it, have you done that before? I suppose, if you don't have a dremel or other means of cutting the spring, that could be a possibility. However, I personally don't think I'd go that route, the arm is pretty heavy duty and where you'd have to bend it for it to be out of the way, seems like it could potentially cause damage to either the gold plating or even the entire vibrato tailpiece. Whereas cutting the spring took 30 seconds.
Use Dremel tool felt bit with polishing the frets 😊
Thank you for the tip, I appreciate it, I will definitely test that out soon and see if it further improves the frets.
Some killer playing sir.Thanks for the video.
I appreciate that, thank you for watching!
😊
Thanks for watching!
😃
Thanks for watching!
AWESOME!! Thanks for this! I do wish you were a bit closer, but I think (hope) I can work it out the same way on my Falcon. I did some more work on my Black Beauty and now have it so the neck pickup is independent and the middle pickup pairs with the bridge. Still not what I want, but ok for now. One thing I've noticed is that the frets on this guitar are SO much smoother than the more recent purchases. I'm thinking that some of these guitars are leaving the "factory" so fast that GG is not taking the time to take care of the things that they got famous for. like silky smooth SS frets. I got a FFMN, and the frets on that are so bad I'm afraid of just grinding through any strings I put on it. The SS frets take a LOT of extra work because they are so hard, but hopefully when I get it done I'll never have to do the same guitar again.
Great job on the classic CULT song for your intro!!
You're welcome, always glad to help if I can, and thank you, I appreciate it, love me some CULT! Yeah, as I said, I wish I knew this was a problem for everyone before fixing mine, I would have put the camera closer. If you're on a phone, I think you can pinch to zoom in. On a TV it might be big enough. Like I said, if you need any further instruction, just let me know.
Glad to hear you're making progress on the Black Beauty, I'm not sure how that guitar is wired, but in order to be able to control each pickup independently, you either need a special 3 way switch with an extra terminal(not sure if Firefly used one, I'll guess probably not) or you'd need each pickup lead to go to an independent volume pot and then from the pots to the switch in the way you have it now, then use the volumes to blend the two connected pickups. If they wired that guitar like they wired the hollow body, they went from pickup to switch, then switch to volume, which makes it impossible to have independent volume controls, it needs to be the other way. If that's the case, it'll be a bit more soldering you'll have to do, and you'll probably need some additional wire to go from pots to switch.
As for the frets, thank you for sharing your experiences, you're probably right. I figured something had to be up there cause everyone's always raving about stainless steel frets (well, almost everyone), Firefly claimed to me that they'll do a better job so we'll see. Unfortunately this is my first experience with stainless steel frets so I'm out of my element currently, as far as dealing with them. Any good tips for smoothing them out? As I said in the video, I got them playable now, but I'm not as impressed as most people seem to be, so I'm assuming there's a bit of room for further improvement.
@@JROID For right now I'm using an OLD knife sharpening stone for leveling the frets, and then just wearing out some small files for crowning and then lots of grits of sandpaper for polishing. I want to order some diamond sharpening tools, but man those are expensive...
@@algoribbon9992 Okay, so not really any different than nickel frets, just more work initially for less work later on. Thanks for the info! And yeah, I'm sure diamond tools are great, but if they're expensive, you'd probably have to do a lot of frets for them to be worth it. I tend to operate on the budget side nowadays, I get more fun out of the less expensive stuff.
I don't have a Firefly... i have a Fame BigBoy... it had exactly the same issues. I guess it comes from the same Factory as the Firefly Guitars. The One and Only thing i did not do is the rewiring... i suck at soldering. I also got rid of the original Nut and got myself a TUSQ Nut... which solved any tuning issues i had. Here in Germany we have "MusicStore" and "Thomann" as the big brands. Normally i would've gone the Harley Benton route which are better in my Opinion... but they have different wiring and no Coil Split, which i wanted because of the obvious Gretsch similarities. One thing i'm gonna replace is the Pickups though. I want my Filtertrons in there it makes it a little more "Gretschy".
Oh and what are you using in this Video Gearwise? Sounds freaking awesome.
@@HowlinAndyDE Hadn't heard of that brand before, pretty nice looking website and guitars, definitely a lot more info than Firefly. I also looked at Harley Benton before getting this Firefly, but shipping made it more than I wanted to pay, definitely a nice looking guitar though.
And I'd be curious to hear a comparison between these pickups and actual filtertrons. It's unlikely I'll ever actually get to do that myself though, so if you replace yours, let me know what you think of them compared to the stock ones. As for soldering, you just have to practice, at first it seems difficult, I did some horrible soldering when I first started learning, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Just practice on some old pots until you make solid, good looking connections.
Lastly, thank you, glad you liked the sound, these days I'm almost exclusively using Amplitube/Tonex, in this video it was a Fender Bassman model for dirty, and a Fender Deluxe model for clean.
You can easily just bend the trem arm to your liking.
Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate it, have you done that before? I suppose, if you don't have a dremel or other means of cutting the spring, that could be a possibility. However, I personally don't think I'd go that route, the arm is pretty heavy duty and where you'd have to bend it for it to be out of the way, seems like it could potentially cause damage to either the gold plating or even the entire vibrato tailpiece. Whereas cutting the spring took 30 seconds.