About a year ago, I bought a nearly new Squier Strat, made in China, with really crummy sounding pickups. I paid $25 for the guitar AND a Fender padded gig-bag. It had razor edge fret ends and the fit of the neck in the neck pocket wasn't great. I fixed both of those.

Earlier this spring, I sold the pickguard and pickups for $15. So at this point, earlier today, I'm in for $10.

Intentionally wanting this to sound somewhat different than a strat. Intentionally doing it on the cheap. I'm going to try the trick of converting ceramic pups over to alnico pole pieces. Looks pretty easy actually.

On the Fenderforum.com one of the top poster's there posted a picture of a really cool looking take on changing a strat. I can't share his photo. But here's a photo of what I'm thinking of. Now, before we get comments about the angles being wrong..... I am doing this somewhat for aesthetics. Strat bridge pups vs. tele bridge pups are roughly 10 or 11 degree angles, compared to 15 to 16 degree angles.

For this, I'm matching the angle formed by the typical strat pickguard right up by the neck.

I have access to a CNC machine, and will probably be moving the knobs and probably will replace the 5 position switch with a bank or two of slider switches; all in line with the angle pups. Some reasons for that idea:

1. I want neck + bridge combo, 2. I might make one of the sliders DPDT with switchable cap values, 3. I might use another for cap bypass.

Three Tele neck pups at angle formed by top line of pickguard by Lakes_of_Colorado, on Flickr

As for the pickguard itself, I went to Woodcraft earlier today, and I'm thinking a birdseye maple veneer over a thin copper sheet.


Last edited by rockstar_not; 06/23/18 06:55 PM.
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