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BRRanger wrote:Ha! Thanks Sumlin! I'm actually waiting to find one I can afford to add to my flock of Mosrites. Or is it gaggle of Mosrites? Hmmm...we need a correct term for a collection of Mosrites...perhaps a Menagerie of Mosrites?
Scott

A "Semie" of Mosrites surely?

I thought the BR would end my guitar buying days for good but it's just made me want a second-series non-slanty-pickup Ventures (or Mark whatever-it-was) now.

Update - cleaned up the pots and both pots carry the same date code and it's 1968 strangely.

Anyway - am I right in thinking Bob from Hallmark is the man to speak to about getting myself 4 new Mosrite knobs and a selector switch?

And does anyone have a good recommendation for a manufacturer of tortoise shell pickguard material that's really dark like the type Mosrite used in the 70s?

Thanks...

Time for an update:

The Brass Rail has been set up by my tech friends, the shim on the zero fret has been removed and the 'rail' part tidied up. They report that it's a set neck once they took it all apart. They had to get creative under the bridge area as the route under the bridge/tailpiece was too big and so it was making the bridge lean forward as the mounting posts didn't have anything to mount to. I've seen this on some of the BRs with the 'horseshoe' extra pickguard around the bridge area.

Thanks to help from folks on this forum I've managed to work out that if there *is* any 70s new old stock Mosrite tortoiseshell material kicking around then I'm never going to find it. My tech friends are waiting on a manufacturer in Italy who maintain that they supplied Mosrite in the 70s but assuming that's a dead end we're going with replacing the lower guard only with 4 ply black material and keeping the upper tort guard as it is. New electrics are separate vol/tone controls, a 3 way switch (all provided by the very helpful Bob Shade), a momentary kill switch that looks identical to the phasing switches on the BR Deluxe and stereo outputs.

Will post pics when it's done...

Finally, the Brass Rail is finished. Opted for a single ply black lower guard (bearing in mind finding matching tortoiseshell was a wild goose chase and I didn't want to change both guards or go for brass) which I think looks rather nice, if I say so myself. Wired like a Les Paul (with a kill switch) and stereo output too. Lots of work done internally and all mods completely reversible. It plays great. The pickups are insanely overpowered so take a bit of getting used to but in stereo with a pickup each going to 2 Fender Twins it's near perfect. Anyway - something weird's going on with posting images (the error message comes up telling me 'it was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image' ???) so here's a link:

https://flic.kr/p/opVPr5

There's a few snaps either side of this one if you scroll through

Howdy Sumlin,
Just bought my first Brass Rail last week, it's on the way and can't wait for it to arrive! Will post pics as soon as it arrives (if I can remember how to post pics)
Scott

They're monster guitars. I can't believe the pickup output on mine - I use this little SJB Ant tube amp at home and with the volume on full (it's 15 watts or so) you can get pretty convincing Neil Young sounds out of any normal guitar but the BR overdrives the amp at about half way. It's insane.

I didn't notice that you have a black pickguard on it until I looked a second time. That fits in real well with the finish.

- Austin

101Volts wrote:I didn't notice that you have a black pickguard on it until I looked a second time. That fits in real well with the finish.

- Austin

It's a really great job from my tech friends at Xperience Guitars here in (for one week at least) sunny Nottingham. Seemed like the best solution to the problem of rewiring it without destroying the old tortoiseshell guard.
I still can't get over how overpowered this thing is - truly insane.

Sumlin, I recently purchased a Bluesbender (or Brass Rail?) body from Gonkulator (it hasn't arrived yet) and it appears to have a similar kind of rout that your Brass Rail has under the pickguard:



Gotta say I'm curious about why it's like this.

- Austin

Who here can deny a Mosrite Rescue? I would really love to see what you will do with this endeavor. I was always intrigued by the three pickup/three switch Mosrite setups, the three slanted pickups always caught my eye. Please keep us updated.