Completely remade my first electric guitar, a 1984 made in Japan Vantage Avenger I bought when I was 17 for $70.
Pulled all the frets and cleaned the slots because the finish was built up over them.
Drilled out a middle cavity for the three single coils I was planning and cleaned up the hack job a previous owner did to put in a bridge humbucker.
Made a new pick guard, the third time I've done that for this guitar.
Then the hardest part, laying out where to drill for the single coils, pots, and switches. For the pickups I looked at a few examples of SSS guitars and took relative measurements, trying to find pictures as flat on as possible. The switches were another story because I decided to wire it so all pickups could be run in series or parallel in any combination and that required three 4PDT switches plus the master tone and volume pot. I just had to guess, hovering the pick guard over the cavity where I thought they could probably fit, and they did! Didn't have to widen or nudge or plug any mistakes!
In all my dad's old electronic stuff I found a box of orange drop caps he used for doing actual electrical engineering work. He was unaware they are the ultra sacred mythical tone cap. So I used one of those.
Anyway, then wiring it all up, and again trying to keep it all tight to fit in the cavity. I didn't come up with the series/parallel wiring, I found it here: https://hermeticoguitar.blogspot.com/2013/10/wiring-diy-3-single-coils-in.html
And it worked first try! I couldn't believe it. After getting it all together I found one string buzzed open so I made a new nut too. Also new tuners (the originals were always terrible) and a new bridge. I think I did about everything short of stripping it and refinishing.
It is my first three single coil guitar, a sort of Japanese strat. I was prepared to get more 60 cycle hum than I'm used to but it is just about dead quiet. You can see how much conductive tape I used in the cavity and on the pick guard. I also made a separate terminal for all the ground connections, so I'm sure that all contributes.
It sounds great, the series/parallel switches change the sound quite a bit, and to my particular interest, change how it interacts with many different effects. I find the tone pot with humbuckers is almost complete useless, but is very useful with single coils, and again changes interaction with effects in an interesting way.
That was a lot of work, but this guitar desperately needed it so I'm glad I finally did it!
No comments:
Post a Comment