Trust me - it was a thoroughly unremarkable instrument. What a journey this guitar has been on! Never a big Les Paul fan, I picked up the cheapest old one I could find because I needed it as a reference for the sound design work I was doing for Apple. Yup, this is the much abused ’82 Les Paul that I’ve used in many tonefiend experiments, especially the OCD-approved Pagey Project. I bought a Bigsby B7 and corresponding Vibramate kit and popped them onto my long-suffering Les Paul. Inspired, I decided to give myself the shakes for Xmas. My old pal and Premier Guitar colleague Andy Ellis hipped me to the Vibramate, an adapter that allows you to install a Bigsby tremolo on many types of guitars with no drilling or other permanent modifications to your instrument.Ī Bigsby and Vibramate were a centerpiece of a cool makeover project the magazine concocted, transforming a beat-up ’70s Epiphone in a bitchin’ Bigsby-bedecked bombshell.

Sometimes it pays to write for a guitar magazine! If the B6 doesn't work out it might be a case of gritting your teeth and fitting the B7.It’s a holiday miracle! The 30-minute Bigsby tremolo installation. I'm afraid I can't see any way of using a Vibromate on a Casino - the B7 relies on being tethered to the top of the guitar and there's nowhere on a Casino to anchor it. I also much prefer the B6 in terms of playability to the B7 - it seems more expressive and easier to use subtly. The B6 is held against the body by string tension by the way, so no screws in the top. On the up side, on my two guitars the upper two screw holes for the original trapezes matched those on the B6, and I used a straplock button with a long screw in place of the third screw hole, so there were no modifications made to either guitar. The 330 worked perfectly, the Casino was much more marginal and took a lot of fiddling to get set up as I wanted it, but it's ok now. I have B6s on my 1965 ES-330 and my '90s Japanese Casino. This leaves you with a very shallow break angle over the bridge or, if the neck set on your guitar is on the shallow side, there's a chance it may not work at all. The B3 and B6 are worth considerimg for a Casino but they're designed for guitars with traditional archtop bridges as you might find on a Gretsch, rather than the 335 style bridge that sits much closer to the body of the guitar.

Bigsby tremolo for epiphone casino