This post combines many guitar projects I have done, ranging from my first major build on December 30, 2015 to the present day.

Intro

One of my first experiences with soldering and workbench troubleshooting skills came from an electric guitar I received in middle school. A great deal discovered on Craigslist by my father and uncle, it was an intermediate model with a number of upgrades available on guitars five times its price. However, something was never quite right about how it sounded, and my playing wasn’t the sole offender. Here’s the only before image I have:

Fast-forward to one day during my senior year of high school, when I plugged the guitar in only to get nothing out. Initial disassembly and inspection found that the output jack had come disconnected, and I patched up the wiring with pipe solder and a $10 soldering iron from Radio Shack. This was my first attempt at soldering and it was not pretty, but it got the job done and made me curious about what else was inside an electric guitar.

A quick Overview of how an electric guitar works

Just like a traditional acoustic guitar, an electric guitar makes sound using the vibrations of its strings. However, rather than having a chamber for these sound waves to resonate and project, the sound waves are translated into electrical signals through magnetic pickups. A simple passive pickup consists of a collection of magnetic poles set in a plastic bobbin with coils of inductor wire on the outside – in other words, it is a transducer which creates an electric signal as a result of changes in its core’s magnetic field. Guitar pickups are typically measured in ohms of DC coil resistance rather than inductance, with typical “clean” pickups (most single coils) measuring in the 5K range and “hot” pickup variants measuring from 9K up to 20K.

Single coil pickups have a phase direction which corresponds to their winding directions (dust off that right hand rule from Physics 2!) They are also susceptible to 60Hz hum from the line voltage. A humbucker pickup eliminates this noise by having two coils of opposite winding to cancel noise, and the extra winding typically doubles the DC resistance, achieving that 9K-20K figure from above. Two coils in the same direction will instead create phase cancellation, which is sometimes undesirable and sometimes fun!

If you’d like to read more (or see some great diagrams like the one below), Seymour Duncan has a great writeup on pickups and how they work.

“Orange Creamsicle” - My first guitar project

During the fall of my Freshman year, I was lucky to have a very musical and tinker-happy roommate. After some back and forth, I realized that the reason my guitar’s aftermarket pickups didn’t sound all that great was because they were in the wrong place! (They are generally color coded, but turns out this model officially does not follow the standard!) Not only did this cause phase issues, but the spacing of the magnets was also not aligned with the strings. While I was in there to move the pickups around, I decided to try my hand at some additional upgrades, including:

• New humbucker lead pickup added to the bottom position, with a push-pull potentiometer to enable switching between 1 and 2 pickup coils (“clean” versus “hot”)
• All new potentiometers, resistors, and capacitors, including a “treble bleed” high pass circuit to preserve higher frequencies when reducing volume
• Copper shielding tape inside the body cavity – goodbye EMI!
• New hardware including Gotoh locking tuners, pearloid pickguard, and TUSQ nut

A few months later I made further modifications, including:

• Pre-finished maple neck and a genuine Fender bridge
• Series/Parallel switch and output killswitch (useful when getting set up) with a momentary pushbutton (just for fun)
• Additional accents - new knobs, a Frankenstein neck plate, and custom logo decals!

As the old question asks, how much can you replace before it’s just considered new?

Other guitars I’ve upgraded or fixed

My Fender Squier Jaguar Bass:

• New Audere Electronics Jazz Bass active preamp
• New Gotoh Bridge
• New DiMarzio PJ Pickup set
• Tortoise print pickguard

My friend’s Wayne’s World 2 MIM Stratocaster:

• Replaced dead pickups with Seymour Duncan Ultimate Axe set, including all soldering
• New Super Vee Blade Runner bridge
• New Gotoh locking tuners, TUSQ nut, and pickguard

What I’m up to now: Further Experimentation

Over the years, I have amassed so many spare parts and takeoffs from upgrades, most of which end up sitting in a crate with no clear intention. Recently, I decided that I would try to repurpose as many of these as possible to create a new guitar. Here’s a quick rundown of what I have:

• A scratch-and-dent body I purchased from a wholesaler for a great deal - I decided to paint it British Racing Green using metallic spray paint.
• The neck off of my first guitar, which I saved after upgrading to the Maple one - I painted the top of this green to match and bought an adhesive inlay.
• A set of stock Epiphone humbucker pickups from a guitar I upgraded for a friend
• Various hardware including tuners, bridges, etc
• A will to learn and a need for more free crate space

I will post more progress pictures as the build continues, currently the last picture is a mockup accomplished by stacking parts on top of each other.