DeepEnd

Then you probably hate the Sire Larry Carlton too. 😉

Still way better than anything I could cobble together.

Sorry to hear it but I have faith in your abilities. 🫣

Yeah the fact that you're talking about bridge pins suggests this is a steel string guitar. You need wire and especially the correct kind of wire. Even if you could make your own guitar strings it wouldn't be worth the effort.

A great deal is going to depend on what you mean by "budget." Epiphone makes their own model of the ES335 called--wait for it--the ES335. It sells for around $600. It won't have P90s but it'll be pretty much as close as you can get to a "real" ES335. There's also the Epiphone Dot but I don't think it's a current model so you'd need to find a used one. As mentioned, Ibanez is always a good option. Never played a Gretsch and my only experience with Guild is their acoustics. Best of luck with the search.

You might lose one but it should be fairly difficult to break a brass bridge pin. BTW, put me in the column that says bridge pins don't have that much effect on tone. YMMV.

Again, this is a video of a worship service but if you scroll down to where it says "April 7" and skip to about 33:30, you can view my original, "And They Laughed." https://maplewoodumc.org/worship?sapurl=Lyt2bnd3L2xiL2xpLyt6M3dta3RqP2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZSZyZWNlbnRSb3V0ZT1hcHAud2ViLWFwcC5saWJyYXJ5Lmxpc3QmcmVjZW50Um91dGVTbHVnPSUyQnozd21rdGo= (BTW, that's Mrs. DeepEnd guest preaching. Our pastor is on vacation.)

As with most things, there's a guitarist out there somewhere who will believe it. Acoustic folks have been known to wax poetic about bridge pin material. 😉 I came up with my own innovation years ago, magnets to stick on the tuning machines to add headstock mass and "energize" the strings.

I played around some more and finally settled on tuning both the 1st and 6th strings down to D. First, it makes the low end fuller, and second, it's easier to play melody--at least in this case--with the first string at D (E with a capo at the second fret). Definitely fun.

An OM and 000 are roughly the same, a 00 is smaller. Here's Martin's official take: https://www.martinguitar.com/blog-categories/tips-tutorials/blog-040320-understanding-guitar-body-sizes.html

garthman - Well done. I can't recall whether I've heard that one but if I have it's been a while. I've been intending to post something so I'm glad one of us did.

The praise band plays a song occasionally that involves a constant C chord on the verses. I usually play it in open C so I can play rhythm and melody at the same time. Sunday, the remaining songs were in either Bb or F. I figured I could tune to open Bb and use a capo for C. From what I can tell, there isn't a standard open Bb tuning but I settled on F Bb D F Bb F. I thought it worked well, although if there's a next time I might drop the 1st string to D instead of tuning up. I like the sound with the 6th string tuned to F though. Anyone use open tunings regularly? If you use open Bb, how do you tune or what tuning would you use?

Congratulations. Happy New Guitar Day.

Congratulations. Happy New Guitar Day. I've always liked the look of mahogany topped guitars.

Hi and welcome back. Congratulations and Happy New Guitar Day.