According to its serial number (E666636) it was made in the Fujigen factory in 1986.
This guitar started life with a S-S-S configuration and had/has a dodgy floyd rose modelled, S1 surface mounted tremolo and locking nut. It was previously modified to incorporate a humbucker in the bridge position as well as having the other two pickups replaced with ceramic ones. A tone pot was also removed and the guitar rewired to have a master tone and volume. The previous owner believes this was done in 1988 (before i was born)!
I have had this guitar for over 3 years now and it is a good all rounder but does not do any one job particularly well, i.e the bridge humbucker is ok but very low output and not as good as the one in my sheraton, the neck single coil is far too bassy and the middle pickup is completely unused. And as for the S1 bridge, this results in very unstable tuning and unpredictable action (depending on temperature).
I will be replacing the pickups, pots, caps, switch, re-building the bridge,as well as completely changing the aesthetics of the guitar and maybe adding a momentary kill switch.
The guitar in mind will basically be electronically the same as a '52 Hot Rod Telecaster, although it will be Strat shaped. Im hoping the finished result will look something like a Tele-Strat cross.
The wiring diagram I used can be found here: http://support.fender.com/diagrams/telecaster/0118600A/SD0118600APg2.pdf
The first thing I did was to rip all the electronics out of the guitar. In my eagerness I forgot to take a picture of the full guitar before the mods.
The pickups and pots that were removed, minus the pickguard.
I was initially going to totally remove the locking mechanism above the nut. I tried this and without a string tree, the e and b string kept jumping out of the nut when bent. Instead of drilling the headstock for a string tree I just removed the locks and pads from the rail and kept it there as a string guide.
The pickups I will be putting into the guitar are a gibson mini humbucker in the neck and the original strat single coil that was in the bridge position before i got it (the guy supplied the original single coils he took out of the guitar). The mini humbucker has more power than the original neck pickup but its low focused output retains single note definition and increases middle and higher frequency responce unlike most neck humbuckers. Im putting the original '86 single coil back in the bridge as I already have a humbucking guitar and miss the punchy twang of other strats I have played.
For the minihumbucker the body had to be routed. This was fairly easy and i did it with a drill and a chisel, after this i completely shielded the pickup and control cavities with aluminium tape.
I also removed the fine tuners from the bridge and put 2 extra springs in the back to pull it against the body locking it down.
Next I removed the output jack, wired a new one in and shielded the cavity also.
N.B. Make sure there is some metal tape overlapping onto the face of the guitar to ensure electrical continuity, between the shielding in the body and the shielding on the pickguard, and the shielding in the output jack cavity and the metal jack socket. All shielding should be connected to earth by some means.
Next I soldered the two pickups to a 500k matched set of audio taper CTS potentiometers. I also used a .022 micro fahrrad orange drop cap to keep the pickups nice and bright.
A midpoint shot of my workstation.
Next I mounted the pickups and pots into a custom cut pickguard bought from Warmoth.com
At this stage I also wired up the switch. I used a 3 way 7 lug heavy duty switch. This switch had to be wired differently from the one in my Tele wiring diagram and details on how to do this were supplied along with the switch by Axesrus.co.uk.
To avoid the sound being too bright in the bridge positon, a 270k resistor was placed between volume pot and the lug on the switch associated with the single coil. This lowers the value of the pot in the bridge possition but not in the neck possition, as the mini humbucker needs 500k pots to sound its best.
I decided to go for a Tele deluxe style look with the control nobs but feared they may be too big so i used gibson witch hats.
Starting to get a picture of what this will look like now?!
Next the pickguard electronics had to be wired to the output jack and bridge earth wire.
After a re-build and tightening of the tuning machines, a set up and a re-string, the result was this:
About a month after this I decided to add a momentary kill switch as I couldn't resist another mod.
This is a simple push to make switch bought from Maplin. One lug on the switch was wired to the live terminal on the output jack and the other lug to the earth terminal. This cuts the signal by dumping it to ground when the button is pushed down.
One last shot!
The result is a guitar which is beautiful to play and hear. Through a decent tube amp like my Vox ac15 the guitar can produce smooth David Gilmour esque leads to biting country twang. I'm also very pleased with the unique look of this guitar. I will be adding more posts on gear mods in the near future, most likely pedals as I have a cry baby that wants true bypass modding.
Keep your eyes peeled!
