To get a ground wire into the body, I have to drill through the side at an angle using a 100mm-long drill bit. With hollowbodies such as ES-330s, Casinos and so forth, you can drill straight through however, the centre-block complicates things with semi-solids. The standard way to do this with semis and semi-solids is to drill a hole through the side of the body at the tail, where it will be hidden by a Bigsby or trapeze tailpiece. The Bigsby can be removed to drill the channel for the ground wire To re-establish a ground connection, I have to run a wire from the Bigsby and I want it to be invisible. Although the wire is still in situ, now we’ve installed the Bigsby, the strings are now connected to the tailpiece and don’t make contact with the stud bushings. Gibsons with stop tailpieces and wrapover bridges have ground wires in the bushing holes. There is, however, a complicating factor because without the stop tailpiece, the strings aren’t connected to ground and the guitar will generate unwanted noise. Hopefully, it’s apparent that fitting a Bigsby isn’t a particularly daunting undertaking.

Epiphone casino bigsby installation