Soldering up a storm
Whilst most of the parts for my electric guitar are taking the slow boat out of the US to NZ, some of the smaller parts arrived earlier than I expected. This allowed me to take a break from sanding and painting, and instead solder up the pickguard with all the electronics.
A standard stratocaster has all the electrical components mounted on the pickguard, which is then screwed directly onto the body. I don’t have a lot of electronics experience, but as the instructions for the pickups pointed out: this isn’t rocket science. Here’s what the wiring diagram looks like:
The pickguard I went for is cream, and I also bought some “creme” buttons/knobs to match. They weren’t a great match. The pickguard was spot-on the colour I wanted, but the knobs were a bit too dark. Thankfully something that is easily and cheaply replaced later.
My plan is for the guitar to have a crimson body, cream plastics, and gold metal bridge/tuners/screws. So the remaining parts were bought with that in mind. I also wanted it to sound awesome, and settled on the Seymour Duncan California 50’s set of pickups.
Given that I don’t do a lot of electronics, my workbench is my dining room table, cunningly disguised with a towel.
And now for more pictures…
And finally…
It took just over an hour to get all the soldering done. I took my sweet time with it because I wanted to make sure it was right. The wires that came with the wiring kit (pots and switch) was plenty for the whole project but I wish they had been a little more generous since ‘lil ol’ me might have liked a little bit more room for error.
I haven’t yet plugged it in and tested it goes, but I happy with my soldering and it matches the diagram nicely. I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine.
I also got some screw terminal blocks (chocolate blocks) for the jack — so I don’t need to solder the jack to the pickguard, I can connect via the blocks. This makes getting the pickguard in and out a bit easier.
When I placed the pickguard onto the guitar I realised that there was quite a bit of play in the positioning. The body is new, so it’s never had a pickguard on it before and there are no guide holes for the pickguard. This presents a small problem as the pickups should be nicely aligned under the strings in order to get the best sound: without the neck/bridge it’s impossible to be sure that the pickups will align. I now need to wait for the remainder of the parts, fit the neck, bridge, and tuners, and a string or two. Then, the pickups can be aligned and the holes marked and drilled for the pickguard.
The catch here is that I don’t have the neck/bridge yet. Also, if the guitar has the clear coat on top when the holes are drilled there’s a chance it will crack the clear coat (bad!). So I can’t finish the body until the rest of the parts arrive.
Speaking of which…
The body is now red! I have started to put the colour coat on. Here’s coat one:
Coat one post sanding (yes, I realise I sanded down to the primer but coat one wasn’t very thick):
And then I rejigged the way I was hanging the guitar to make it easier to move inside to cure. I had been hanging it with fishing line but found that I’d have to lay the guitar down inside. This risked damaging the paint before it had fully set. I wanted to move to a system where I could lift it inside without needing to put it down. I started with a homemade hanger cut from cardboard because I was too lazy to go out and buy some cheap coat hangers (my nice ones I didn’t want to risk getting paint on). This worked quite well but the hanger part failed slightly, however fortunately the guitar was inside, dry and didn’t have far to fall.
Coat two…
And how it looks with the pickguard…
Shit is starting to get real!
Now I am waiting for the rest of the parts so I can drill the holes for the pickguard. Then it will be a final colour coat, sand, and clear coat on the body. Then final assembly, and hopefully — hopefully… awesomeness.
