Pickguard on a rear-routed body

croquet hoop

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Let's say I want a Strat body with a pickguard, but the only body that aesthetically suits me in the showcase is rear-routed.

If I have the body routed for S-S-S and standard Strat controls, is it possible to use pickguard-mounted electronics? I guess I will have to route the channel between the pickups, install the pickguard with only the pickups mounted, then install the pots & switch from the back.

Am I missing a step, or a detail which makes this setup undesirable? And is there a way to ensure the pickguard and the routing for the pots/switch on the top will match?
 
I've been thinking the same thing but with a Soloist with a pickguard
 
I don't post often, but recently routed my Strat in just this manner.

Purchased a rear routed body a couple years ago, but wanted a different pickup route.

It worked out fine and actually made it easier to get to the electronics from the rear. Only potential issue is that you now have the thickness of the pickguard and the wood above the control rout. You will need long shaft pots and will most likely have to rout/do some wood removal for the standard strat switch.
 
Thanks for your input. Yes, it might be OK for the pots, but it may be trickier for the switch... that depends of the thickness of the wood I guess.

The simplest solution might be to route a hole — there will be a pickguard anyway (meaning, holes for the screws), so leaving the face of the body untouched might not be that critical.

edit : there is also the option to cut a larger hole in the pickguard, as Ibanez does :

002.JPG


(source)
 
croquet hoop said:
Thanks for your input. Yes, it might be OK for the pots, but it may be trickier for the switch... that depends of the thickness of the wood I guess.

The simplest solution might be to route a hole — there will be a pickguard anyway (meaning, holes for the screws), so leaving the face of the body untouched might not be that critical.

edit : there is also the option to cut a larger hole in the pickguard, as Ibanez does :

002.JPG


(source)

Why would you want to do it that way?
What you do is drill a large hole through the body and then use a straight bit with a bearing on the bottom to route the top of the instrument to follow the shape of the rear cavity.

If that's too much work, then just drill a row of holes around the switch with a forstner bit (brad point slightly to the side of the slot.), and drill for the pots.
 
I put a clear Strat-style pickguard on a rear routed Warmoth body last fall.  The end result was great though, as you'd expect, there are some challenges.

First, Warmoth's rear drilled standard strat control pattern has the same spacing as you'll find on a stock pickguard, but they are drilled in a slightly different position (down and a bit askew).  This means a stock strat pickguard won't work if you have Warmoth drill the control holes.  Even if you want to use an undrilled standard size pickguard and drill it yourself it won't work.  The lower 'horn' isn't long enough or wide enough to allow for lowest 2 knobs.  If you drill the holes in the body for the controls yourself to match a standard strat pickguard I still don't think it'd work due to how close the lowest knob is to the edge of the body.  I think Warmoth drills their strat controls slightly askew the way they do so that the control pot is far enough away from the edge of the body to allow for the mounting of the inset rear control plate. 

Second, as has been mentioned, the thickness of the pickguard has to be taken into account.  The thinnest clear acrylic that I could find was .080".  Much thicker than that would be unusable.  It ended up working fine but I did have to use long shaft pots (Gibson style or most push/pull styles are long enough).  You also need to use either a longer shaft selector switch (the ones for the Ibanez work fine), get knob that is very tight and only push it on half way or do the cutout like on the Ibanez above.

In any case, if you want to use stock Warmoth drilling, you'll need a custom pickguard.  Mine was stock so I had Terrapin Guitars in Oregon make me the transparent pickguard shown below.  I simply traced out the shape, pickup, knob and screw hole positions I wanted on a piece of paper and Terrapin digitized it and cut it out.  They did a fantastic job and everything lined up perfectly.

bs-1.jpg
 
I'm doing it to a Strat body to fit a Thinline pickguard. Didn't fancy paying Warmoth's upcharges for the routing so I've just drilled right through the top, larger holes than the switch, pot and jack need and have the parts mounted to the pickguard, not touching the wood at all. This has the added benefit of keeping the bottom of the electronics further from the rear cover plate, gives me a bit more room for wiring without worrying about stuff accidentally touching the shielding.
 
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