Tobacco Burst Strat

I couldn't stand it anymore.  I walked into Guitar Center today and bought an S-S-S white pearl pickguard and a set of Texas Specials.  It will probably be temporary, and I can sell it as a prewired pickguard on eBay later.
 
My pre-wired assembly came in today from 'Rothstein'.
It looks great. White pickups and cream  pearloid.
Now it's just sit and wait for the guitar..........
 
dudesweet157 said:
guitlouie said:

She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow...

Never really understood that Cream tune.

The lyricist, Pete Brown, wrote some "interesting" lyrics back in the day. Believe it or not, he got even stranger on Jack Bruce's solo albums. Look up the lyrics to "Smiles and Grins" and you'll see what I mean. If you're flying courtesy of Owsley they probably make perfect sense.
 
Well... on Friday when I got home from work, the FedEx truck pulled up right as I was pulling into the driveway.  I was excited and pissed at the same time.  Oh well, I knew I could easily return the pickups and pickguard I bought at Guitar Center.

I spent today drilling the body for the pickguard, and mounting the new components to the pickguard.  Now, I've got a big soldering job ahead.

1007072126.jpg

 
Well, I'm 95% done.  I thought I had the pickup wiring done today until I discovered that, in my haste, I had soldered the middle pickup wire to the wrong side of the 5-way switch (position 1 and 2 are always bridge + middle).  Like an idiot, I put the pickguard on the guitar with the neck and a new set of strings without testing it beforehand.  Other than this fix, I still need to install the string tree and the tremolo cavity cover.

On another note, these pickups are quite bright.  I'm glad I followed Lace's recommendation to use 250k pots.

Edit:

I forgot metion that one of my push-pull pots (the push-down/pop-up style from Warmoth) broke after test fitting the pots and knobs on the pickguard.  I guess it didn't like having it's knob pulled off.  :)  Anyway, I ended up using the remaining one to switch from single coil to humbucking for both the neck and bridge.  The mechnisim on those switches seems to be very fragile.
 
I hate to sound like a broken record, as i've said this before on many posts, with many in agreement.

String trees are to keep the strings in the nut, if the strings are not jumping out of the nut when you play, avoid them. It will be easier to keep the guitar in tune without the trees.
 
Ive never used the push pull pots b4. if coil splitting ive always used switches. but the push push ones do seem rather convenient 
 
Fixed the wiring problem.

>JR< said:
Ive never used the push pull pots b4. if coil splitting ive always used switches. but the push push ones do seem rather convenient 

I went with the "pull-pull" pots because I wanted to maintain the traditional Strat look as much as possible (of course, H-S-H doesn't look traditional at all).  There are two other caveats with these switches.  First, in order to have enough clearance to operate the push-down/pop-up switch, the knob has to rest fairly high above the pickguard.  Second, the solder terminals are very small and close together.  Getting more than one wire stuffed in there was a challenge, and I had to trim some of the strands off my 22 AWG wire just to get one in.  If you decided to use them, they will certainly be the most difficult part of your wiring job.
 
Thepriebster said:
But what if the trees had rollers? Would it still affect the tuning?

Well the nit picky answer is yes, even rollers have some friction, but are better than normal string trees.

The trees pull the strings harder towards the nut, therby creating more friction at the nut, so when you bend a string and release, the string may not return to an equall tension point, your string will tend to go flat. A good quality nut helps, and warmoths corian nuts have worked well for me.

 
nathan a said:
That's a sweet sweet tone there, very full. Maybe it's the canary; if so, it sounds awesome.

Honestly, I don't think the canary makes that much of a difference, but it does feel great to play on!  Acoustically, I can't hear any real difference between my 62 reissue and this guitar.  I think the pickups really make the difference here.  I'm playing the Lace neck pickup in single coil mode, for both the rhythm and solo, through my J-Station.

LOL... listening to my playing, I sound like a cross between early Fogerty and Stevie.  I guess when I'm buzzed I get that quivery Fogerty like vibrato/tremolo thing going.
 
Phrygian > I guess it's too late, but do you have picture of the back of the pickguard? Just to take a look at the soldering job. I'm finding that kind of thing fascinating lately!  :toothy11:
 
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