Sponsored by
www.seymourduncan.com
Look out Rockers, the Mods are coming! Simon Croft introduces this new guide to hot-rodding your favourite axe with a guide to selecting the most suitable tools and preparing your working environment.
W
elcome to the first in our series Hot-Mod Your Guitar. Every month, we’ll be guiding you through different ways to make
your guitar or bass play, sound and look more like the instrument you’ve always dreamed of owning. Don’t worry if you haven’t done much work on your guitar before. We’ll go through each process step-by-step with plenty of pictures to guide you. Just as importantly, we’re putting videos on- line that explain exactly what’s involved and to demonstrate how some of the mods will sound! We’ve also put some free Primer books on-line as PDFs you can download. They’re packed with pages of practical advice, along with diagrams and photographs to make everything clear. As the series progresses, we’ll be putting PDFs worksheets on-line too. Think of them as recipes for a hotter guitar – and believe us, we taste them all before we serve them up!
Seeing is believing! Hearing is believing! Our online videos are a useful way to see how our Hot-Mods are done. More importantly, they’ll let you see and hear the results. Plus, we’ll be showing you a lot of reversible mods. That way, if you decide at any time in the future that you preferred the instrument as it was – or you’d like to put it back to stock because you want to sell it – you can.
Why hot-mod your guitar? Everyone who decides to modify his/her guitar or bass has a slightly different need. Some guitarists want something that is uniquely theirs. They might want a guitar that looks different, or offers tonal options that the stock model doesn’t have. Other players simply want to upgrade their instrument beyond the factory spec. Maybe they’re happy with the way the guitar looks and plays but want to fit new pickups and better shielding or a new vibrato unit and machine heads. Either way, they’re aiming to get stadium-level performance from a guitar or bass that started out in the mid- price range.
Some players just want their guitar to play the best it possibly can, working on the general playability and changing some components to boost their guitar’s overall performance. We’ll be looking at custom finish techniques,
40 3pickup
performance-enhancing hardware upgrades and the setup techniques that will get the best from any guitar. Above all, we want to help you to make it YOUR guitar. The one that suits the musical styles you play and the individual sound signature you want to put across.
~THE HOTROD (figs. 1 & 2) These pictures are courtesy of Andy Taylor of
Taylor Trumpets. Although Andy is well known as a specialist builder of really brilliant brass instruments, he also puts some really cool guitars together in his spare time. (If you think trumpets can’t look distinctive, go to
www.taylortrumpets.com for an eye-opener!)
Andy says: “The Gothic Strat thing I did just for the crack of it I pieced it all together from bits, finished it with Humbrol spray paint.” When it comes to parts, Andy points out that quality costs money and he admits that the Telecaster (also shown here) he put together was expensive. But he adds: “It’s still a rattle-can lacquer job – as its application and patience that’ll get the result, not necessarily a deep wallet!”
Plan ahead Fender guitars are among some of the easiest guitars to modify because they are essentially bolted together and their electrics are easy to access but you still need to consider what you really need before whipping out the soldering iron. I own a couple of very good mid-1980s Japanese Fender Strats and they still look close to original – but they’re not – and I did all of the modifications myself! One Strat came with a massive Series II locking vibrato. Although you could never put it
out of tune, it seemed to suck some of the tone out of the guitar. It took some careful drilling and a new scratch plate to change the locking vibrato for a Wilkinson vintage-style type but it in the end changing the bridge vastly improved the overall sound and feel. This Strat is also loaded with two staggered-magnet pickups at the neck and bridge and an active TBX circuit, which contributes more detail to the clean sounds and can give massive boosts for lead work. Before installing an active circuit board you need to plan whether you need to shield the cavities before you put the electrics back in – and also where you want the battery compartment to go. Since fitting the TBX, this Strat can turn an average amp into something that sounds more like a really expensive boutique model – which really freaks people out during an open mic night down the pub! A second Strat that I own is now fitted with
a Warmoth Fender licensed birdseye maple neck and is about to be fitted with a set of Lace Sensor pickups, as you can see on the www.
playmusicpickup.co.uk web site.
When NOT to mod! There are instances when it makes no sense to modify a guitar or bass. You’d be mad to change an instrument when: 1) Its worth far more without alterations (especially vintage instruments) 2) You could buy a replacement part or new instrument that might work better than the mod 3) You’re not sure whether you have the skills or materials to carry the mod out successfully So there are times when it makes sense to sell
Fig. 2
Fig. 1
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64