Advice on archtop tailpieces

I have owned an epiphone joe pass emperor II for a couple of months now and I have decided it is not generating the tone I have been searching for. I use the instrument strickly for jazz and it is far too bright. My idea had been to replace the stock brass tailpiece with a wood unit, for example the benedetto ebony tailpiece found on stewmac.com; however, the price of this unit ($100) is much more than I can afford.

I hope that you can help me with either my search for cheaper alternatives that I wont wind up regreting (i fear the $10 tailpieces on ebay are garbage) or other options I may wish to look into to help improve the acoustic tone of my guitar.

Daniel

Danile, your archtop IS an electric guitar.. replacing the tail for another material may indeed produce a very SUBTLE diference, but chances are most wouldn't notice.

You might try a different value cap, but my first suggestion would be to replACE THE inferior Epiphone pups..

And remember, many notable archtop players (like Wes) turn their tone knobs ALL THE WAY down.. for a more bassy, yet woody sound.

But if it were my axe, the pups would be the first thing to go..

Replace them (some nice Seymours?) and by all standards you will have a nice lil archtop demon!

mm... I might have to disagree slightly with the above, my mate swapped his the other way round and found it made quite a bit of difference (he had a wood one, swapped it for a metal ajustable) and his guitar was noticably much brighter and more electric-sounding. I don't really dissagree with anything else maxwell says, but if you find one at a good price, I'd say it would be worth you doing.

sorry, totally mis-read the post, I know nothing about tailpieces:eek: I thought we were talking about bridges:freak: Sorry........