Looks great. I finally pulled the trigger on a guitar—an Epiphone 335 PRO. It's a bit nicer and closer to the 345 than the base 335 Dot, as it has pearl inlays in the neck (they are rectangles as opposed to the 345's split parallelograms, but they still look more accurate than the simple dots). Also, it has binding on the neck and the jack on the front face like the 345. It's still missing the extra varitone dial of the 345, but oh well. Here's a pic:
It will need a Bigbsy vibrato added, but that's easy. You can buy a $200 Bigsby B7 (original style Bigbsy made in the USA) or one that looks 90% the same—the Bigsby B70, which is what Bigsby calls the "licensed" (AKA made overseas) version of the B7, for about $100. Since my guitar will be a $500 Epiphone vs. a vintage or re-issue Gibson, I'll opt for the B70.
For those looking to buy a guitar more as a prop, there is an ultra low-cost version out there that can be used as a starting point: an Oscar Schmidt (by Washburn) OE30 Delta King. They can be had on Ebay for LESS THAN $200. Though the quality control on these low end guitars is all over the place, most agree that they even play fine, even great, if you are willing to pay a little more than average to have it set up by a professional. I almost went that route. Here are the ones available on Ebay:
On their website and in some sellers' stores, they seem to be selling a slightly updated version with a switch near the top...
I'll post pics of my guitar when it gets here. It's supposed to ship out on Friday.
Lastly, was there ever a consensus on the color of the pickups? I could have sworn they were gold, but after studying those pics Renesix posted, some clearly seem to show silver pickups. It actually looks like the 6 screws are gold, but the pickup covers were silver. I can't find any replacement pickups that come that way, though, silver with gold screws, so it's a puzzle. In the pics where the pickups look gold, that could easily be explained by the yellowish tinge being caused by a reflection of the warm yellow overhead lighting.
At any rate, even in the pics where the pickups seem to be silver, the Bigsby on the end looks gold as hell, which is strange because the Bigsby comes in both gold-plate and chrome-plate, and is usually ordered to match the color of the other hardware. This is killing me...
