I’m not a collector of guitars, and buying my Supro I knew that I wanted to someday be able to play it out.  But making a gig-worthy guitar out of it proved to be a bit fickle.  The primary culprit has been the vibrato unit.  While I feel like it’s a well thought-out design with decent manufacturing quality standards, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard.  A good, well set up vibrato unit can be used and can return the guitar to pitch when the player lets go of the control arm (popularly known as the “whammy bar”).  With my Supro, there was no using the vibrato without throwing the guitar out of tune.  Any slight wiggle and I was out of tune.  It would frequently get stuck in a semi-tone flat sort of position.  I could raise it back up and sometimes be close to in tune, but for the most part it was more hassle than it was worth.  A shame too, because it actually felt and sounded pretty good on the rare occasion it worked right.

So my first thought was to replace it with something like a Bigsby B5 vibrato unit.  I figured I could make a steel or aluminum plate that would screw in to the body via the existing holes left from the original vibrato (no way was I putting new holes in a vintage guitar!).  However, given the spacing of screw holes between the original and a B5, there wasn’t any way to make that work.

Second, I thought I could get an original Valco-made Supro Dual-Tone “stair step”tailpiece and see if that would fit.  No dice.  I would’ve had to drill extra holes.

So finally I decided to make something custom.  I wanted it to look like a Supro Dual-Tone “stair step” tailpiece, but knew my limits in fabricating any metal parts.  I’ve got a modest woodworking shop, but metal work is mostly beyond my capabilities.  However, I can get flat stainless steel laser cut parts made.  You may have seen my other post about my custom control plates.  So I devised a custom design tailpiece influenced primarily by the stair step, with a few modifications so it could be cut in flat stainless steel.  Here’s what it looked like, fresh from the laser cutter, and still flat.

My first task was to find some place that would be able to bend it at nearly 90° for me.  I called around to a couple of local machine shops near me, and finally found a shop called Hutchins Performance.  I called them up and they said they’d be willing to give it a shot.  I rode my bike over right away.  It turned out to be an impressive auto parts machine/repair shop out of Mr. Hutchins’ garage.  I was happy to be visiting another nearby craftsman like myself.  He was really friendly, covered all my questions, asked all the others, and less than 10 minutes later my part was bent.  And for only $5!

It’s lightly scratched, but nothing I can’t polish out later.  Besides, I still has some work to do on it before I could call it good.

Of course, first I had to take off the original vibrato unit.  I’d done this a half dozen times before, so it was no big deal.  In fact, I think I’ve become one of the country’s leading experts on how these vibratos work, haha!  The offender:

Prepping the plate proved to be more work than I had anticipated.  I had to enlarge all of the mounting holes, countersink the underside of the string teardrops, find spacers to sit underneath to hold it at the right height, and copper shield the underside for the grounding wire.

Finally the moment came where I could install it.  I had to snag another set of strings because the ones on there were no longer long enough.  I strung it up, adjusted the neck (many old Valcos have adjustable neck angles, and I designed the new tailpiece to allow me to lower the neck angle), adjusted the action at the bridge, and I was in business!

You can see how the new tailpiece uses two of the four vibrato mounting screw holes, as well as the strap button screw to hold it steady.  It’s rock solid on there, and barely touches the body around that corner.  I’ll polish it up later after I pick up a larger countersink for the forward two mounting screw holes.  I’ve also got lots more custom control plates that need polishing before I can get to this one.

Here’s one more picture.  So far, I’m loving the difference in feel and overall stability it’s added to the guitar.  You might also notice the clear acrylic spacer I made to set bridge intonation.  This beauty is finally gig-worthy!

I think the first time I saw a Valco and really took note of it was a red fibre-glas-bodied Airline I saw on Ebay.  Something about the body profile along with the whole rest of the package sparked something inside of me.  Some lost fascination and excitement for vintage guitars made in the golden era of electric guitars.  It was like I always knew there had to be another company besides Gibson and Fender that made amazing electrics, I just didn’t know who they were.

After I saw that first one I was immediately hooked and I had to know more.  I started searching for Airlines and found more fibre-glas bodied models, and then made the connection between Airline, Supro, National and Valco.  Valco was the parent company, and the others were in-house and private labels.  They made guitars for Sears, Montgomery-Wards, and the Supro brand was their own.  You can read a lot more about Valco at valcopages.com

I got in to it.  My obsession with every other kind of guitar fell by the wayside and the Valco Dual-Tone/Belmont/Holiday/Sahara body style took center stage.  I modeled my very own Oceana model after it.  Eventually I became the proud owner of a 1964 Supro White Holiday – my dream Valco.

At some point I took note of Eastwood Guitars.  Here was an up and coming guitar company who somehow got license to use the Airline and Supro brand names.  They created modern guitars with some of the cool looks of the old Valco originals.  Personally I wasn’t impressed with them.  To each his own, but I felt like they didn’t capture something about the guitars they were modeled after, and I quickly lost interest.

Sometime later I caught wind of another new company that was doing something really exciting.  Found atGuitarKitsUSA.com, this company had gained ownership of the word “Res-O-Glas,” which was Valco terminology for their fibre-glas bodied guitars. Not only were they making guitar bodies with unmistakable Valco flavor, but they were making them true to specs. Yeah, in fibre-glas! Finally! The real deal! They started with the more famous “JB Hutto” body style, sold in a kit where you add your own parts to their body, and soon added (much to my delight!) the Belmont body style. These bodies look great, and they even nailed the internal construction. You can get them with a few different styles of neck pocket so you can put just about any neck on it. Talk about a cool project! And your guitar will have some of that awesome semi-hollow Res-O-Glas tone!

Check them out if you’re looking for something cooler than the usual stuff on your next DIY guitar. I’ll even offer up discount prices on my handmade necks if I know it’s going on a Res-O-Glas Guitars body. Here’s a few pics from their site to get your mouth watering.

Here’s a gallery of plates I’ve made in the past.  Some of these photos are by me, others are by my so-far 100% satisfied customers.