Wired Wood
Guitars
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Project Stratocaster
Donor instrumentAcquired 2nd hand for just £30, the donor is a 1996 Squire affinity strat 50th anniversary edition in black. This version has a 22 fret neck and a 45mm full depth body. The serial number implies that it was made in China in 1996. Tuners
ElectricsI set on a quest to source some cheap alnico pickups to replace the original ceramic units. I got lucky at the Manchester guitar show in May 2008. where I bought a tortoise shell scratch plate, complete with pickups and electrics, for just £30. The seller told me it was from a Japanese Stratocaster. Even if I only used the plate, it was worthwhile. On closer inspection the pickups were single coils with metal slug magnets amd black vulcanised fibre flatworks. I measured the resistance at about 15K Ohm. This is high for a single coil pickup, which are more typically about 6K. My best guess at the moment is that these are Seymour Duncan SSL-3. The bridge pickup has a third wire, not connected. A little measurement with the meter indicated that this was probably a coil tap. I had never come across this in a single coil pickup before. Again the Seymour Duncan website gave some clarification. A number of their pickups are available with a coil tap. This allows you to just use part of the coil to get a more "vintage" sound. The SSL3-T is just such a unit. More evidence to support the pickup identity. The other unusual feature of the scratch plate is a push / pull switch on one of the tone pots. This was wired to connect the neck and middle pickups, therefore giving the option of turning all three pickups on at once. Now that I understood what I had I re wired the push pull switch so that it acted as a coil tap for the bridge pickup. Otherwise the wiring was left as the standard Stratocaster circuit.
Tapped: 8.8 k Full: 16.4 k Pickups and scratch plate from a "Japanese Stratocaster" tortoise shell 11 screw scratch plate to replace original 8 screw Alnico slug magnet pickups versus ceramic bar. 14K Ohm. Tapped single coil at bridge Push pull pot. Drill and chisel out control cavity to accommodate.
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Rumour has it that you can take a cheap
Squire Strat and, with a bit of work, turn it into a decent instrument. This is
my attempt.
The first problem to address was the guitars reluctance to
stay in tune, even with the trem locked down. This was quickly traced to the
cheap and cheerful machine heads. These were replaced with a set of cast tuners
from e-bay. I had to ream out the holes to accept the new units and plug the
existing screw holes, so it wasn't
just a straight swap.
