Working thru my other projects

falco_femoralis

falco_femoralis

Well-known member
I've been wanting to put this together for a while and I've finally found the time now that my big car project is done.

This is my cheap $79 SX strat. It's sentimental to me. A while ago I put a set of Fender Pure Vintage 59 pickups in it, which are not noise cancelling in the in between positions, so I copper taped the inside. Made no difference.
IMG_6229.jpg

It's not the exact same shape as a Fender so I had to make some alterations to the new pickguard
A2vEsw5.jpeg


I got this file set on amazon a couple years ago. It's one of those things you don't think you're going to use but it's very nice to have when you need it
5z02p4B.jpeg


All wired up, except for one thing. Can you spot the mistake?
kammGE4.jpeg


And here we are. I wanted to add a humbucker in the bridge so the guitar would have some kind of hum cancelling. The humbucker is coil tapped via a push/push pot so pos 2 can be hum cancelling as well. Normally I would use a super switch to get cool auto coil tap in pos 2 and 4, but I wanted to use the original switch that came with the guitar in this case.
k8QWAoG.jpeg
 
falco_femoralis said:
I've been wanting to put this together for a while and I've finally found the time now that my big car project is done.

This is my cheap $79 SX strat. It's sentimental to me. A while ago I put a set of Fender Pure Vintage 59 pickups in it, which are not noise cancelling in the in between positions, so I copper taped the inside. Made no difference.
View attachment 104529

It's not the exact same shape as a Fender so I had to make some alterations to the new pickguard
A2vEsw5.jpeg


I got this file set on amazon a couple years ago. It's one of those things you don't think you're going to use but it's very nice to have when you need it
5z02p4B.jpeg


All wired up, except for one thing. Can you spot the mistake?
kammGE4.jpeg


And here we are. I wanted to add a humbucker in the bridge so the guitar would have some kind of hum cancelling. The humbucker is coil tapped via a push/push pot so pos 2 can be hum cancelling as well. Normally I would use a super switch to get cool auto coil tap in pos 2 and 4, but I wanted to use the original switch that came with the guitar in this case.
k8QWAoG.jpeg
Click to expand...
Did you solder a ground wire to the cavity tape to a ground connection? (Back of a pot)
 
MichaelW said:
Did you solder a ground wire to the cavity tape to a ground connection? (Back of a pot)
Click to expand...
I overlapped the copper tape onto the top of the guitar so it would contact the copper backing of the previous pickguard when it was screwed into place. This pickguard doesn't have copper backing like the one I used for the SSS config
 
Feral Feline said:
The GEETAR looks great! Love CAR as in candy apple red, but... What about the big car project? What did I miss there? 🤔
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I took apart the rear suspension, fuel tank, and brake lines in my BMW so I could remove all the rust back there. I put it back together with brand new everything. It's my winter car and it's getting colder now so I was getting worried the car wouldn't be ready in time for the snow and salt
 
If you had “hum cancelling” in the middle position before, then the shielding won’t add much.

I still have (and occasionally use) the SX P bass (30 inch) that I got my son when he was 11 and his friends were getting electric guitars. (Since I had electric guitars he wanted to be different, and the one bass I had at the time, a fretless 5 string, didn’t make sense as a starter). That SX bass is really pretty nice; at the time (I think it was ~$80) it seemed nicer that the Squiers I looked at.
 
Paradox916 said:
Right handed people will never truly appreciate the context of this statement…
Click to expand...
SX was one of the only companies that stocked reliable, affordable left handed guitars when I was learning. And they had a great selection of different colors and models. I found this one on the guitar center used website a few years ago, and the date code matched to my original guitar so I smashed that mf buy button
 
I got back to finish this the other day. I wanted to make it an HSH so I opened up the pickup cavities to make it a swimming pool route, then applied new copper tape.

Some of the pickguard screw holes weren't doing too well and others were in the wrong places, so I bought a 3/16" dowel at HD to fill them.

To drill out the old holes, I ran the drill bit in reverse at first to define the circumference without chipping or wandering, then forward the rest of the way. Then I used a pick to put some wood glue down in each hole, cut off a length of dowel, and hammered it in. When the glue was dry I trimmed the dowel with a flush cut saw and then a chisel. I placed the pickguard over to position the new holes and drilled them, then screwed it into place.

The dowel method results in the screw mating with end grain, which isn't a great connection, so then I removed the screws and used super glue to give strength to the threads. Inserting the screws creates threading in the wood grain and the super glue reinforces that threading. After the glue was dry I put the screws back in.

JNbYiNE.jpeg


I routed the pickguard for the neck humbucker. placed it so the middle pickup is equidistant from each humbucker. This resulted in the screw holes being a bit off, but that's not a big concern to me. The screw pole pieces are just about where the single coil neck pickup was, so it retains positioning under the 3rd harmonic node. When it's coil tapped it sounds just like a strat, but with maybe a bit less high end. But I wanted a fuller sound than a strat pickup with this.

dksNLYa.jpeg


It sounds great! Like a strat with a humbucker.
 
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