Blackguard Telecaster Build Continued – Spraying a Nitro Lacquer Guitar Finish

I was bumming all week, since the weather forecast was for warm sunny weather through the work week, then cooler and rainy all weekend. It turned out on Saturday the only thing all wet was the weatherman himself. It got into the 70s and sunny with very little wind, so I was able to move forward with my paint job.

Before painting, I needed to remove the excess filler and sealer built up the string-through, ferrule and neck screw holes. I suppose I could actually have accomplished this during the week, but I didn’t want to get everything out and have to clean up to make so little progress. I cleaned out the holes using a handheld drill bit to carefully ream them clean.

I used blue painter’s tape to mask the neck pocket to keep the lacquer out. 3M makes a lacquer-specific tape in green, but I haven’t been able to find it for sale anywhere locally, so I made do with what I could get. I just need to be sure when I’m done painting the neck will still fit without having to perform any unnecessary surgery.

Since I don’t have an indoor workshop or garage to paint in, I needed to build a makeshift spray booth. I managed to come up with a pretty decent, workable solution without spending a dime, using materials I already had in the house.

I used duct tape and a few yards of plastic painter’s drop cloth to cover three sides of my patio swing’s frame. This created a large enough booth to give me good shelter from the elements and allow plenty of room to work.

I mentioned before how noxious the nitrocellulose lacquer fumes are, but I’ll repeat myself here. This stuff will make you seriously sick if you don’t handle it properly. Always wear a NIOSH-approved respirator mask and eye protection when spraying lacquer (or enamel for that matter – it’s not any safer). I got this dual-cartridge respirator from Harbor Freight for under $20. That’s a cheap investment to save the brain cells the lacquer would kill, not to mention the risk of emphysema further down the road.

I shook up my Reranch aerosol and allowed it to sit in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. This helps reduce sputtering from the can’s nozzle and improves the spray pattern.

Now for a couple of helpful painting terms:

I paint in smooth, overlapping bars across the body, keeping the can an even distance from the surface and working from top to bottom. When the entire surface is covered, that constitutes one “pass.”

Three complete passes make up one “coat” of lacquer.

There are some useful tutorial videos available on YouTube. I recommend watching them before starting to spray with a $16 can of lacquer.

I paint only the front and back with the body hanging in the booth. After each pass, I simply turned the hanging body around to get the other side.

With the front and back painted, I clamped the paint stick horizontally to my bench top, allowing easy access to the sides. Much like with sanding, it’s easy to overdo the spray on the sides. I found one good pass pretty much equaled my full coats on the front and back.

Here is what it looks like after the first coat of three passes.

Butterscotch Blonde can be a really tricky finish to get right. It’s a translucent color, so it partially obscures the wood grain as you build up the color through multiple coats. You have to strike the right balance between the color depth and visible wood grain. The instructions on the Reranch website (http://www.reranch.com/solids.htm) say the grain should be about 50% obscured by the paint. The problem with this particular paint color is, if you go one too many coats, you’ll get something akin to baby poop yellow.

When I got done with the first two somewhat dry coats, I was almost where I wanted to be. In the end, I decided to quit at two full coats plus one additional pass.

I know the paint color looks somewhat splotchy and uneven in these pictures, but that’s not the case in person. The full sunlight creates some pretty harsh reflections, but it also makes it really easy to spot imperfections. Had I not checked in direct sunlight, I might not have realized I needed a touch more paint on the end of the neck pocket before packing up for the day and leaving the paint to cure.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

[Telecaster® is a registered trademark of Fender Musical Instrument Company.]

Prepping for a Nitro Lacquer Paint Job

[Note:] I had hoped to post this update much earlier in the month. What should have been a one-week update wound up taking the better part of a month due to a combination of some minor mistakes on my part and the uncooperative weather. This is an inherent risk in working with the finishing materials outdoors – especially at this time of year.

I got up on New Year’s Day, and the weather was still (mostly) on my side. It was still warm enough to apply the sanding sealer outdoors, but the wind was blowing 10-15 mph with gusts forecast for 25. I sure couldn’t spray any aerosol under those conditions.

I was forced to either change my approach, or wait for the weather to change to better suit my purposes. At this time of year, it’s generally a good idea to get as much done as I can while the temperature’s right, since it could easily turn 20-30 degrees colder for the next month or two.

I had originally set out to buy the quart can of Deft brush-on sanding sealer, but it was out of stock at my local Lowe’s store so I picked up the (temporarily useless) aerosol. I checked online and the other store about 3 ½ miles in the other direction had it in stock. I went to that store and picked up a quart of brush-on sanding sealer and a good 2” brush.

Before I could seal the body, I had to block sand with 220-grit to remove the excess grain filler from the surface, leaving the wood’s pores filled. I didn’t take any pictures of the sanding, since that would be about as illustrative as pictures of grass growing.

I let the weight of the sanding block do the work rather than pressing down on it. The paper cuts just fine that way without gouging. I wiped the dust regularly and looked at it under bright light to make sure all the excess filler was taken off. The dried filler is white and opaque, so it would show up through my transparent butterscotch finish.

I put the body on my work bench outside and brushed the first coat of sanding sealer across the grain on the top and sides. It’s best to brush the sealer on in long, smooth strokes. That keeps it from leaving too many brush marks in the sealer, since I would have to sand them out later.

I let the top and sides flash off for about 20 minutes, and hung the body up to seal the back.

After the back was coated, I left it to dry for an hour. One nice thing about working with brush-on lacquer is that the brush can be wrapped tightly in saran wrap between coats – it doesn’t have to be cleaned until you’re finished for the day. That works out great for me. Cleanup ranks right next to sanding on my excitement meter.

I left the body hanging to dry for about an hour and a half, then went back and brushed a second coat of sealer on the front, getting down into the pickup and control cavities with the brush this time. Then I hung it back up to cover the back and sides with their second coat. I didn’t bother with pictures of this, since it’s exactly the same as the first coat.

At this point, I went ahead and cleaned out my brush and left the sealer to dry overnight.

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The next day it was time to dry-sand the sealer coats with 220-grit paper. The idea is to sand down any runs/drips and level the surface. So I sanded the entire surface, trying to get an even matte finish. Low areas on the surface show up as shiny spots. I used the rubber sanding block for the entire front and back, and as much of the flats and outside curves as possible on the sides. The tight inside curves at the upper and lower bouts, and a narrow section at the waist had to be done mostly with sandpaper backed by my fingers, though I was able to “block sand” a fair amount of the inside curve at the lower bout by wrapping the sand paper around a Bic lighter.

The goal isn’t to get a completely level surface with the first sealer coats, but rather to refine the surface to enable you to get a completely level surface with the second round of sealer coats.

After I sanded and wiped down the entire body, I noticed several deep scratches in the front of the body at the heel end. I don’t know how they happened, but they look almost as though it were gouged with a screwdriver. There was no way I could fill these scratches with sealer and end up with an acceptable final finish.

This meant I’d have to repair the scratches before I could move on, so I took my sanding block and sanded past the scratches 2-3 inches across the heel of the body in the process. This means I sanded past not only my sealer coats, but the grain filler as well, so I had to refill the grain in the sanded area.

So I went back according to my Reranch instructions, rubbed the filler into the repaired area and left it to dry for 20 minutes…

…then wiped it down with mineral spirits and left it to dry for an hour. After the hour was up, I repeated the fill/dry/wipedown, and left it to dry overnight once again.

The long New Year’s weekend treated me to perfect weather for applying the nitro sanding sealer to my Tele body. When I had to sand past the sealer and grain filler on part of the body to remove some scratches, it set me back by a couple of days – or so I thought.

After it dried overnight, I block sanded the excess grain filler level with 320-grit paper, and repair looked really good.

Unfortunately, the weather turned a little more seasonable for the rest of the week. We got stiff winds, daytime highs in the 40s and overnight lows in the 20s (originally forecast in the teens). These aren’t exactly ideal conditions for applying lacquer outdoors.

My next possible opportunity to reapply sealer to the repaired area would be the following Saturday when the temperature reached the low-mid 60s. Even then, I couldn’t apply the second complete coat of sanding sealer, since it would be much cooler and rainy on Sunday. You can’t apply lacquer in high humidity, since the lacquer will trap the moisture and either “blush” or blister.

It seemed my 2-day delay would stretch to a week or perhaps longer.

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I got a couple of surprises Friday. 1) The temperature got up to just about 70 degrees, and 2) I got off work a little before 3:30, so I had time to set up and put a sealer coat on the repaired and refilled area on the Tele.

I put one coat on the top, in the direction of the grain. I coated to just past the sanded and refilled area and on the sides, where the block sanding took off almost all the sealer from the first coat.

I let it dry for an hour, then added a second coat – across the grain this time. After an hour or two drying time for the thinner to flash off, I brought it inside and hung it up for the night.

The weatherman called it right, and I got perfect weather on Saturday for brushing on the sealer.

I brushed on two more coats. Reranch says to let it dry overnight before sanding it level. I decided to give it an extra day so I could be sure the lacquer wouldn’t load up the sandpaper.

I got the top and back level sanded to a nice, even matte, but even with a light touch on the sides I managed to sand through at both the upper and lower waist, with a couple of suspect spots at the upper heel and upper bout areas.

Another sealer application was called for on the sides before I could progress to the color coats. I’d rather be meticulous and take my time prepping, rather than be forced to sand it back down and start over later because the sealer isn’t right.

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Unfortunately, I was forced to contend with a spate of uncooperative weather for a couple of weeks. I had to apply my coats of sealer in between bouts of rain, fog and sub-freezing weather.

I do my sanding next to a window on the kitchen table – indirect sunlight is many times better than any amount of artificial light for spotting low spots and imperfections in the finish. Unfortunately, by the time I get home from work during the week, there’s not enough remaining daylight to set up my materials and do any sanding. The weekend came again, and Saturday the weather was so bad it never got brighter than twilight all day long; the day was a loss as far as my project is concerned. Sunday I got enough light to do a little sanding, so I went to it with the 320-grit and sanding block on the front and back and handheld paper on the sides.

I discovered the secret to hand sanding the sides: use a LIGHT touch. Feather-light finger pressure on the sandpaper leveled the sealer quickly – anything more would have caused me to sand through again and have to start over. I sanded until I thought most of the high spots were taken down, but the light started to fail, so I waited for better light to finish up so I wouldn’t sand through again.

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Yesterday was sunny and beautiful, so I broke out the body and sanding supplies. It seems I really did get it just about done last Sunday. It only needed a little light touch-up, mostly near the edges where the sealer built up a ridge when I brushed it on. It took about 10-15 minutes of careful sanding to put the final touches on my surface, then I sanded the sealer out of the sides of the neck pocket so the neck would fit again. It’s surprising how little sealer it took at the edges to make the pocket a much too-tight fit for the neck. The body now has a nice, even matte appearance, ready to spray on the Reranch aerosol Butterscotch Blonde lacquer.

This weekend is much too windy to spray aerosols outdoors, but I need to set up a makeshift spray booth on the patio first anyway.

I hope the weather forecast for next weekend changes. Right now it’s supposed to be nice and sunny through Wednesday, then rain through the weekend (again).

A New Project for the New Year: An Early ’50s Blackguard Telecaster® – With a Twist

I had a lot of fun with my first project, customizing my Daphne Blue Bullet Strat® into my own “signature model,” but I really wanted to build my own guitar.

Since I have neither a garage nor shop space to house the necessary machinery for a scratch build, this will actually be a “partscaster” project – assembling a guitar from parts, rather than raw materials.

I intend to document each step of the project in some detail for the benefit of anyone without guitar building experience who might decide they want to follow along.

Here is what I have gathered so far for the project:

The body is a one-piece swamp ash 1951-’69 style Telecaster body from B. Hefner Company (www.bhefner.com). My kitchen scale died some time back, so I don’t know its weight, though subjectively it feels very light to me. That will turn out to be a good thing for my broken-down back when the finished guitar comes in at a bearable weight.

I purchased a maple Squier® Classic Vibe® 50s Telecaster® neck from a member at the Squier-Talk Forum. Necks like this are regularly available on eBay with the stock Kluson-Style tuners. This neck came with a set of Sperzel-style locking tuners installed. I would normally be inclined to use the vintage style tuners, but there’s a good reason (which will become apparent further into the project) for using the modern tuners on this particular guitar.

I gathered the materials for a good nitrocellulose (“nitro”) lacquer finish. The oil-based grain filler and Butterscotch Blonde nitro lacquer came from the Guitar Reranch (www.reranch.com). The Deft® nitrocellulose sanding sealer, mineral spirits and lacquer thinner came from the local Lowe’s store. I have read others’ experiences that Deft clear lacquer can sometimes take a very long time to cure, so I decided to use Minwax® clear lacquer instead for the clearcoats. Neither Lowe’s nor Home Depot carries the Minwax lacquer in my area (though Home Depot does carry it in some locations), so I picked it up at Wal-Mart. It took some research to verify that the Minwax lacquer is, indeed, nitrocellulose.

The other finishing supplies include: #220-grit sandpaper, a rubber sanding block, cheesecloth (actually gauze) and a tack rag from Lowe’s; and #320, 800 and 1000-grit wet/dry sanding sheets from the Wal-Mart automotive section (for final sanding the lacquer finish).

All of the finishing materials are solvent-based. Allowing them to contact your skin will cause extreme irritation and remove your skin’s natural protective oils. Do not handle these materials without protective gloves. I use blue nitrile gloves; I have read (but not independently verified) that lacquer thinner will eat through latex gloves.

Before you begin the finishing process, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go to www.reranch.com and read the instructions in “Reranch 101” thoroughly. If you still have any questions, there is a wealth of information online, especially at the Telecaster® Forum (www.tdpri.com) and the Guitar Refinishing and Restoration Forum (www.reranch.com/reranch). Get your questions answered before you waste time and expensive materials learning lessons you should have learned from someone else’s mistakes.

The body came a couple of weeks ago, and it has been handled quite a bit, so before I started the grain filling process, I gave the surface a quick wipe-down with a piece of cheesecloth dampened with mineral spirits to remove any skin oils from the surface of the wood. Since the grain filler itself is oil-based this step might not really be necessary, but I’d rather not take any chances.

An added benefit of the mineral spirit wipe-down is that it really shows off the wood’s grain.

Since Swamp Ash is such an open-grained wood, the first step in achieving a smooth finish is grain (pore) filling. If this isn’t done first, the finish will soak into the wood’s pores like a sponge. As the lacquer cures it will shrink further into the pores, leaving a rough finish surface.

I applied the oil-based grain filler I got from the Reranch store a small amount at a time, rubbing it into the grain with my gloved fingertips until the entire top, sides and back were covered.

After a few minutes, the filler started to harden, so I took an old credit card and scraped across the grain to remove the excess filler from the surface, but leaving it in the pores.

After 20 minutes or so additional drying time, I lightly wiped the body again with the cheesecloth and mineral spirits to remove the excess filler on the surface of the wood, while leaving it in the pores, and allowed it to dry undisturbed for another hour.

I did the grain filling at my kitchen table (protected with heavy brown Kraft Paper). The low-odor mineral spirits and oil-based grain filler are not especially volatile solvents, but I still recommend opening a window if you’re going to use them indoors. Luckily the New Year’s Eve weather here cooperated, so it was plenty warm to work next to an open window.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE ANY OF THE LACQUER PRODUCTS INDOORS! They contain high levels of highly toxic volatile organic compounds. Use them only a well-ventilated workshop (or outdoors) and while wearing a proper respirator.

After the filler dried for an hour, I applied another coat – repeating the filling, scraping and wipe-down – and left the filled body to dry overnight.

Comments and questions are welcome/encouraged.

(Fender®, Squier®, Bullet Strat® and Telecaster® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).

Final Assembly and Testing Stratocaster® Electronics

I compared my wiring job carefully to the Fender® wiring diagram and didn’t find anything mismatched, so I threaded the output wires through to the output jack hole, set the pickguard in place on the prepped body and soldered the output jack wires to the new Switchcraft jack.

Once the output jack plate was attached to the body, I made one final check. I plugged the guitar into my amp to test the pickups in each switch position by tapping the exposed polepieces lightly with a screwdriver to make sure the pickups produce sound in the right positions.

I tested the individual pickups and the in-between (bridge-middle and neck-middle) positions on the 5-way switch, and each switch position produced sound from the right pickup(s) and all three pickups have output. My first wiring job came out right.

I test fit the new pickguard when I first removed the original, and found only 5 of the 11 screw holes line up with the holes in the new pickguard. I had already filled the non-matching holes with toothpicks and Titebond wood glue before shielding the cavities. This is actually only necessary if the existing hole is very close to, or even overlapping, the new hole position since the pickguard covers the holes anyway. Since that was the case on a few of the holes, I just filled them all. With the pickguard in place, I screwed in the 5 matching holes and drilled new pilot holes for the remaining 6 screws with a 1/16″ twist drill in my Dremel tool.

With the rest of the holes drilled, I finished fastening the new pickguard to the body. The nearly complete guitar actually looks like the guitar I envisioned when I started this project.

With everything in place, I added a new set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky .009-.042 strings. Now that everything is together and tuned up, my modded Bullet is ready for its first test run:

I can tell you it’s very satisfying hearing the first guitar I wired myself playing through a tube amp for the first time. I’m anxious to hear how the new Fender Alnico pickups sound in each switch position versus the original cheap ceramics.

Switch Position 1 (bridge only) – I’ve heard some people really don’t like the hot bridge pickup in the Fender Tex-Mex® set, but I think it’s pretty nice. Sometimes overwinding a pickup mutes its treble response, and the pickup can become somewhat “muddy” sounding. It seems Fender found a pretty good balance for this pickup. It’s hot, but clear-sounding in the midrange and treble without being overbearing.

The tone controls in the original pickguard didn’t seem to work at all with the stock ceramic pickups, but this tone control is very useful. It starts rolling off the treble response as soon as you turn it down from 10, without “muddying” the tone at zero.

Position 2 (bridge-middle) – The Fender Tex-Mex pickups have a curious reputation. People seem to either love them or hate them, so I initially felt a little buyer’s remorse. As of now, you can officially count me in the fan column. I like the mix between the hot bridge and middle pickups a lot.

Position 3 (middle only) – The middle pickup without tone control has an interesting character. It’s a completely different, wide-open tone, without being the least bit shrill or “icepicky.” I really like it. My son riffed through a White Stripes intro, and this position seems to suit it perfectly.

Position 4 (neck-middle) – No output.

Position 5 (neck only) – No output.

Well, that’s a bit of a disappointment. I was feeling pretty good about this so far, but I know the wiring is good, so my son and I did a little brainstorming.

Remember, all five switch positions worked before I screwed the pickguard down, so the problem has to be something grounding the signal to the shielding. He guesses the neck tone control is grounding out, but I disagree. Since the two tone controls are wired together, if the neck tone grounds out it should kill the output from all three pickups. My guess is either the 5-way switch, or the neck pickup itself.

I laid the guitar flat on the table still plugged into the amp with the switch in position 4 (neck-middle) and started removing screws along the bottom edge of the pickguard. When the first four screws were loosened, the edge of the pickguard lifted from the body and the strings started singing through the amp. I flipped the switch to position 5 (neck only) and still got output. When I pressed the pickguard back down against the body, it went dead again. This is a good sign; it should be easy to find and fix whatever is grounding the signal out in the cavity.

I unstrung the guitar, removed the rest of the screws and carefully raised the pickguard, then looked for the hot wire from the neck pickup on the switch. It’s at the center of the switch, so it reaches deepest into the control cavity. I bent the switch terminal about 1/16″ toward the pickguard and pressed the pickguard back down against the body. Voila! I’m getting output again, so I buttoned down the pickguard and worked through all five switch positions – everything works.

The full-size CTS pots are much nicer than the original cheap miniature pots. They turn more smoothly, with a hint of rolling resistance. With the poly/film “mustard” tone capacitor, the tone controls roll off the treble response nicely, and the tone doesn’t get muddy when they’re turned all the way down. I don’t feel any need to try a more expensive orange drop or paper-in-oil (PIO) capacitor.

We saved a lot of time troubleshooting by identifying exactly what didn’t work first, so we could narrow down what would cause only that before we started changing anything. When you’re troubleshooting, it makes no sense to look at everything when the problem will narrow down the possible causes.

The only thing remaining is to do a good setup to get the action and pickup heights right and my first project guitar will be complete.

Comments and questions are welcome/encouraged.

Fender® and Tex-Mex® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company.

Rewiring a Squier® Stratocaster® with Fender® Pickups

It’s time to install the upgrade pickups and electronics in my Bullet Strat®. The process here is exactly the same for any Stratocaster or Strat-style guitar.

The Bullet Strat comes with a white single ply pickguard and ceramic magnet pickups. They’re not bad for the price of the guitar, but upgrades can turn it into something special.

I decided on a set of genuine Fender Tex-Mex pickups for this project. This is a nice set of Alnico magnet pickups wound for a “Texas blues” vibe, with a hotter than normal bridge pickup. These are the same pickups that come stock in the Jimmie Vaughan artist model Strat. I picked them up online for $60, including shipping. I won’t say what vendor they came from; I wasn’t happy with their service (shipped 6 days after ordering), or the fact that they did not provide tracking information. A simple Google shopping search should turn up similar pricing (stick with larger retailers).

I’m also replacing the plain white pickguard with something a bit more attractive. I opted for an “aged pearl” three-ply pickguard ($11.95 from dragonfireguitars.com). This pickguard really is quite a bit nicer than even some of the more expensive options from other sources.

A nice bonus feature with this pickguard is the generous shielding on the back. Combined with the copper foil I applied to the body cavities, it will help keep out electrical noise.

The stock electronics serve their purpose, but they aren’t very durable. Since everything will be apart anyway, it makes sense to replace the potentiometers (pots), switch, wiring and tone capacitor at the same time. I selected a vintage style Strat wiring kit ($27.95 with free shipping from eBay) consisting of all USA electronic components: CTS 250k Ohm Audio Taper pots, a CRL 5-way switch (original equipment in USA Strats), a Switchcraft mil-spec output jack and enough cloth-covered wire to connect everything.

The wiring kit came with a tone capacitor, but I already had a package of new old stock (NOS) low voltage poly/film “mustard” caps that I purchased from eBay a few months ago and I wanted to try them out. Many (perhaps most) people choose a Sprague “orange drop” capacitor – another good choice. The most important thing is the value of the capacitor used. In the case of a single coil equipped guitar, the correct value is .022 mfd.

I started by removing the Fender aged white pickup covers and knobs I previously installed in the Bullet’s pickguard and installing them, with the new Fender Tex-Mex pickups, in the new aged pearl pickguard from dragonfire.

I have decided that I really like the surgical tubing “springs” that come with the Fender pickups. My hands are starting to get a little arthritic and clumsy at times, so I had some trouble controlling the springs when I changed the covers on the stock Bullet pickups. The tubing held the screws in place for me while I dealt with the pickups, making it a whole lot easier. The pickups also stay straighter once they’re installed.

Once I got all of the pickups in, I added the full-size CTS pots and CRL 5-way switch. I cleaned the oxidation off the foil around the holes with a pencil eraser before I put the pots in, so the housings can make solid electrical contact with the pickguard shielding.

I printed out the Jimmie Vaughan wiring diagram from the support section of the Fender website (http://www.fender.com/support/articles/stratocaster-service-diagrams) for reference. The Jimmie Vaughan wiring is slightly different than standard Stratocaster wiring. It has a master volume control, and tone controls for the neck and bridge pickups (no tone control on the middle pickup). The bridge tone control will help tame the hotter bridge pickup.

I followed the diagram, starting by wiring the pickups to the switch.

I worked my way through the diagram carefully, one wire at a time.

Here you can see the tone cap. One lead is soldered to a contact on the pot, the other end will be soldered to the pot housing, along with a ground wire connecting all three potentiometer housings.

Finally, all of the circuits are connected. The only wires left are the output wires that will lead to the jack.

Once the output wires were attached, I laid the loaded pickguard on the table next to the wiring diagram and double-checked each wire on the diagram to make sure I didn’t miss anything. An extra set of eyes and hands (my son’s) helped out a lot.

Now that the wiring’s done, I have a fully loaded pickguard with hot Fender pickups ready to install in the body.

(Fender,® Squier,® Stratocaster® and Bullet Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).

Shielding a Stratocaster® Body

There are a few things I need to accomplish on the guitar body before I can replace the electronics.

First, of course, I had to remove the original pickguard and electronics. I started by removing the output jack plate…

…and then desoldering the output jack.

I placed an old towel between the output jack and the guitar body to protect the finish from dripping solder.

Next, I removed the strings and unscrewed the old pickguard assembly. This allowed me to lift the entire assembly clear of the body.

The bridge ground still needed to be detached in order to fully remove the pickguard. I just clipped the wire at the end where it was attached to the tone potentiometer. Cut it as close as possible to the potentiometer; this wire needs to be soldered to the new pickguard assembly.

After I removed the old pickguard assembly, I test-fit the new pickguard to the body. The pickguard is advertised as fitting “most Fender® Stratocasters.” Some screw holes on a replacement pickguard will usually not line up with the holes in the body. As it turned out, only 5 of the 11 holes lined up with the holes in my guitar’s body. After I determined which holes would line up, I filled the non-matching holes with round toothpicks and Titebond wood glue.

In the first installment, I discovered that the black shielding paint in the pickup and control cavities isn’t really conductive enough to shield from electrical interference. I just happened to discover when I brushed a finger against it that it also rubs off easily.

I used the corner of a dampened washcloth to clean as much of the shielding paint as I could out of the cavities so it wouldn’t interfere with the adhesive copper foil I am using to shield the guitar.

The copper shielding material came from a local guitar shop. It is a very thin, self-adhesive foil with electrically conductive adhesive. Some adhesive foils do not have the conductive adhesive. Make sure to get the right foil. Mine came as a sheet, but it is also available as a tape from 3M (again, be careful to pick the tape with conductive adhesive).

This shielding is not strictly necessary; a lot of guitars are built and sold without any shielding. I opted to use it because I have fluorescent lighting and ceiling fans throughout my house. These have a tendency to cause a lot of electrical noise. The inductive guitar pickups can easily inject that noise into the signal chain without the shielding.

I don’t have pictures of the foil installation. Both my and my photographer/assistant’s hands were occupied doing the shielding.

We cut the foil into small, manageable pieces and covered the cavities in sections. We started with the sides of the cavities, then added the larger pieces to line the bottoms of the cavities.

We left small “tabs” of foil overhanging the top of the body at one point to make an electrical connection to the shielding on the back of the pickguard. This gives a nearly unbroken ground plane completely surrounding the control and pickup cavities. I burnished the foil with the side of a Craftsman socket to get both better adhesion and a smoother surface.

A quick continuity check demonstrated that there is zero resistance between any two points in the cavities.

With the cleanup and shielding done, I will be ready to drop in the new pickguard after I finish the wiring.

(Fender® and Stratocaster® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).

Replacing the Tuners on a Squier® by Fender® Bullet Strat®

The Bullet Strat® is an amazing value for its price, but it is far from perfect. Perhaps its most widely (almost universally) acknowledged weakness is the stock “trapezoid” tuners. The tuners’ gears don’t mesh smoothly, and don’t have any lash adjustment. In operation they are hard to fine tune and generally won’t hold tune very well.

There are a number of suitable replacements – something to fit everyone’s taste – that won’t break the bank. Several good choices are available from both Guitar Fetish (www.guitarfetish.com) and Dragonfire Guitars (http://dragonfireguitars.com). You can pick from modern sealed tuners, locking tuners and vintage Kluson-style, as used on early Stratocaster® and Telecaster® guitars.

The tuners I chose for my project are nickel plated vintage-style tuners from Dragonfire. They cost only $19.95 plus shipping, and should be a significant improvement over the stock trapezoids. As a plus, they will satisfy my internal traditionalist by giving the guitar a nice, vintage appearance.

The stock tuners’ shafts ride in press-fit bushings on the front of the headstock. The bushings that come with the replacement tuners are a larger outside diameter than the stock bushings. Sometimes (depending on the replacement tuners) the replacement tuners’ shafts will fit the stock bushings. If that is not the case, the old bushings must be pressed out from the back and the holes in the headstock enlarged to fit the new bushings.

There is more than one way to accomplish this. Perhaps the most correct is to use a drill press with either a metric step drill bit or a 10mm bit to enlarge the holes to the 10mm required for modern tuners, but that requires both an expensive bit and access to a drill press. This is really not a job for a hand drill, the 10mm straight bit carries the likelihood of causing “tear-out” of wood around the holes on the back of the headstock (even used with a drill press), and a minor slip with the step drill bit could either make it impossible to fit the tuners properly or badly mar the front of the headstock.

A more commonly used alternative is to use a handheld tapered reamer to enlarge the holes.

This tool is available at most hardware stores and, being handheld, allows you to work slowly and carefully to avoid damaging the headstock.

To use the reamer, place it in the hole with light pressure and turn the tool gently clockwise to cut away the excess wood. Work slowly, test-fitting the replacement bushings frequently. When the bushing fits the hole to the point where its shoulder is about a nickel’s thickness above the front of the headstock, stop and move on to the next hole. This allows enough tension to hold the press-fit bushing securely.

I don’t have a tapered reamer in my toolbox, and being thrifty (cheap), I didn’t want to buy one until I was sure I needed it, so I started by removing the old tuners.

Then tested the new tuners’ fit:

Luckily for me, the tuners I purchased fit with the stock tuner bushings. This makes my job replacing the tuners that much easier, saves me the trip to the hardware store for a tapered reamer, saves the cost of the reamer and leaves me with a spare set of 10mm tuner bushings in the parts box.

Another issue some people have observed when installing vintage-style tuners on the Bullet Strat is that on some of these guitars, the flange on the low-E (rearmost) tuner will overhang from the edge of the fretboard. My visual inspection before removing the old tuners indicated it would be a close thing on my particular guitar.

You can see from the picture that it is indeed close, but I got lucky and all the tuners fit on the headstock. The next problem is installing the tuners straight. The bodies of the six tuners create a nearly unbroken line when installed, so even a little misalignment makes them look quite sloppy.

The answer is to use a straightedge held in place by either clamps or double-faced tape to align the tuner bodies while you drill the pilot holes. I opted to use the back tremolo cover from my Fender replacement cover kit, held in place by a pair of inexpensive spring clamps.

As shown in the photo, I used a 1/16” drill bit in a Dremel multi-tool to drill the pilot holes, guided by the notches in the tuner bodies.

I’m actually quite pleased with the end result. The tuners are lined up nice and straight on the headstock.

This type of replacement tuner covers all but one of the existing tuner mounting holes from the stock tuners. One open hole remains to the top left of the high-E tuner. This hole is filled using a round hardwood toothpick and some Titebond wood glue. I clipped off the sharp end of the toothpick and checked the depth of the hole, then cut it a little shorter than that depth with a sharp utility knife. That allowed me to coat the toothpick with glue and push it flush with the back of the headstock so I didn’t mar the headstock trying to cut or sand it flush afterward.

I did make the mistake of wiping the excess glue off with a dirty thumb, so the repair doesn’t blend as well as it could (I should have known better; I’ve made the same mistake before). You should wipe the excess with the corner of a slightly dampened paper towel to prevent the same mistake.

Here are the replacement tuners viewed from the front of the headstock:

That’s all there is to replacing the Bullet’s poor-quality tuners. The tuning on my guitar is now a lot smoother and more stable, and the guitar looks a lot sharper to boot.

(Fender®, Squier®, Stratocaster®, Telecaster®, Bullet Strat® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).

Soldering Practice

I have a background in electronics (25 years in satellite communications in the Army), but the last 18 years have been mostly in management and education/training, so my soldering skills have gotten a bit rusty.

None of the soldering required for an electric guitar is of the precision, space program-quality variety, but the solder joints do need to be solid and clean.

Only a few tools are necessary for the limited soldering needed to build or modify an electric guitar.

First, you need a good soldering iron. A soldering gun is over 100w (mine is 130w) and generates far too much heat for electronics. On the other end of the spectrum are the inexpensive 15-25w soldering pencils. Neither of these options will work for this purpose.

I have a moderately priced dual-heat soldering station from Radio Shack. It allows settings of 20w or 40w for varying needs. When soldering wires to the metal housing of a potentiometer, the housing itself will absorb a lot of heat, making it hard to melt the lead solder. For that reason, the 40w setting is needed to make solder connections to the potentiometers in a guitar.

You also need some solder. I prefer a thin 60/40 (lead/tin) rosin-core solder. It is also available from your local Radio Shack. The thin solder melts more quickly so you don’t leave the heat on the components for too long and burn them up.

You also need something to remove solder from a joint in case you make a mistake or need to remove a component. There are vacuum bulb solder removers for this purpose, but they’re a bit pricy for my cheap nature. I use a braided desoldering wick, available at – you guessed it – Radio Shack. By applying heat from the soldering iron tip to the braid on top of the joint, the solder flows out of the joint and into the braid, allowing you to remove the wires or components.

Not strictly necessary, but very helpful, is (rosin) paste soldering flux. The solder has a flux core, but if you place a small (tiny) amount of flux on the wires and/or contacts you are joining, the solder will flow more readily.

If you have never done any soldering, I’m afraid this post won’t teach you. I am simply refreshing my skills at this point.

There are a number of good soldering tutorials on the web, and some good demonstrations on YouTube. If you have no experience, do yourself a favor and read/watch some to learn what you need to know. The only soldering tasks you must be able to perform are connecting wires to a terminal on a switch or potentiometer, and soldering wires to the back of a potentiometer housing.

To practice my soldering, I bought the cheapest full-sized potentiometer I could find at Radio Shack. I already had some 22awg hookup wire in my toolbox.

This allowed me to do a few test runs making the same types of solder joints needed for the guitar. I practiced:

1) Fluxing and tinning wire ends.

2) Soldering hookup wire to the terminal eyelets on a potentiometer (this is the same procedure for soldering component leads, though electronic components are more subject to heat damage than wires).

3) Soldering wires to the potentiometer housing. This is how we connect various points together as a common ground.

4) Not pictured: removing solder joints and practicing again.

A few tips may help ensure you get your best results.

1) Flux and “tin” your soldering iron tip (coat it with solder) when you first heat it up and regularly while in use. It will transfer heat better if you do, and it will be nearly useless and burn up very quickly if you don’t. I have personally found this nearly impossible without paste flux.

2) Tin the ends of your wires (especially stranded wire) before bending the ends and soldering the joints. You will be able to get a good solder joint more quickly and remove the heat before you burn up any components.

3) Use the paste flux on every joint. Use a toothpick or a short piece of wire to apply a small amount of the flux to the wire and terminal. The solder will flow into the joint much more readily.

4) Be careful to avoid “cold solder joints.” If you remove the heat from the joint too quickly, the solder joint will be weak and subject to breaking off. When the solder flows into the joint, count a relatively quick 1-2-3-4-5, then remove the soldering iron. Hold the wires in place until they cool. A good joint will be smooth and shiny. If the solder joint is rough, lumpy, or a dull silver color, do yourself a favor and redo it.

I used my practice wire and potentiometer to make several test runs, soldering and desoldering hookup wire from both the terminals and housing of the potentiometer.

Practice these types of connection until you can consistently get good, solid solder joints before you move on to the expensive components in your guitar.

A Few Words on Out-of-Control Mod Budgets

Even before I sought out and bought my Squier® Bullet Strat®, I had put together a wish list of upgrade parts to turn it into a much nicer guitar than it was as it left the factory.

Producing this guitar to sell at its target price point mandates some cost-saving compromises by the manufacturer – some of these are more or less matters of personal preference, but others unfortunately adversely affect the playability. When we decide to modify and upgrade our guitars, we aren’t constrained by profitability in a particular market segment. This is my guitar and I don’t have to compromise for anyone.

Well, maybe I don’t have to compromise, but I discovered why I might want to.

When I put together my dream sheet of upgrade components and aggressively searched online for the best price on each part I couldn’t get locally, the resulting build budget (including the $120 guitar) was a tad north of $375. A quick search on the used gear section of Guitar Center’s website revealed no fewer than 275 genuine Fender Mexican Stratocasters I could choose from at or below that price, some of them significantly lower. Part of me rationalizes that I am building a highly personalized guitar with the features that I want – one I can’t buy anywhere. My more sensible side tells me that a $250 used Fender with $100 or so in upgrades would be a much better investment with a slight cost advantage and better resale value.

While the Bullet has a well-finished (slightly thinner than standard) basswood body and an excellent neck, a few upgrades are pretty much mandatory to turn this fairly decent instrument into a truly good one. The tuners and plastic string nut simply have to go. The combination of these two give the Bullet irritably unstable tuning that is frustrating on a beginner guitar. Certain other elements can optionally be replaced to make the guitar better sounding, better looking or more reliable.

In my first round of mods, I replaced the zinc-saddled stock tremolo bridge and its tiny zinc sustain block with a Mexican Fender block that has stamped steel saddles and a heavier block. This gave me a noticeable improvement in sustain and better aesthetics for a relatively modest cash outlay. Some of the other items on my list were harder to justify.

I happen to like the look of vintage Kluson-style tuners. In my upgrade parts search I stumbled across a nifty set of tuning machines by Gotoh that retain the look of the vintage Klusons and add a modern locking feature. They can be found on eBay, but the best price I found online was at Stewart MacDonald (http://www.stewmac.com) at $60 plus shipping. I can buy the actual Kluson tuners on eBay for $38 but hey, I don’t have to compromise, this is my project. Using this example it’s easy to see how a $120 project guitar can quickly get much too expensive for its own good. After discovering what my original mod budget could have bought, I set out to decide where I was willing to compromise and still come up with a guitar I like.

Tusq® makes synthetic string nuts that are supposed to rival ivory and bone for tone quality at a lower price. A pre-shaped and slotted nut for Fender® guitars is about $11 on eBay and requires only minor filing and sanding to fit. This is a couple of dollars more than a bone nut blank, but I can put off buying a costly set of nut files for the time being.

The first item on the chopping block was the set of locking tuners. While I like the idea of the vintage look along with the modern locking feature, what I actually need is the tuning stability not offered by the original Squier trapezoid tuners. I found a set of vintage-style tuners from Dragonfire Guitars (http://dragonfireguitars.com) that offer the needed upgrade for $19.95.

The stock pickups in the Bullet are ceramic magnet types, but they are capable of providing excellent tone, as evidenced by some demos available on YouTube. Still, Alnico pickups are a nice upgrade, so I was going to put in a set of handwound pickups from either D. Allen ($88) or Benson Custom ($79). I will probably still buy pickups from both of these boutique makers for later projects, but for the sake of reining in this budget I decided to look for a reasonable compromise here as well.

I found a set of upgrade pickups (“Texas” Alnico Staggers) from GFS (http://www.guitarfetish.com) that fill the bill nicely. Including shipping they come out to about $57. A quick search on amazon.com showed me I can get a set of genuine Fender Tex-Mex pickups for about $60 shipped. I’m pretty sure that’s the final decision on that front.

I picked out a well-shielded aged pearl pickguard from Dragonfire for $11.95 and ordered it along with the tuners. It’s purely cosmetic and doesn’t add anything to the functionality of the guitar, but hey, it is my project; I don’t have to compromise on everything.

I found a nice prepackaged Strat 5-way wiring kit at Guitar Parts Resource (http://www.guitarpartsresource.com). For $29.99 it includes a CRL 5-way switch with two tips, Switchcraft output jack, three CTS 250k pots, an orange drop tone capacitor and enough wire to complete the electronics upgrade. These are exactly the individual upgrade components I would choose, and it would be very difficult to buy them separately and match the price.

As noted in my first post on this project, the shielding paint in the control cavities isn’t sufficient to do its job, so I’ll shield the cavities with self adhesive copper foil to reduce electrical noise induced by ceiling fans and fluorescent lighting. This I can buy at a local guitar shop for about $8.

So, by making a couple of strategic compromises on my upgrade parts list, I was able to shave nearly $100 from my mod budget. I am confident that I can’t find a Fender Strat for that cost that would equal the guitar I’m building.

After a couple more parts acquisitions, I’ll proceed to gut my Bullet and finish my first mod project. See you then.

(Fender®, Squier®, Stratocaster®, Bullet Strat® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).

My First Project – “Modding” a Squier by Fender® Bullet Stratocaster

My first project is a Squier® Bullet Strat® with Tremolo in Daphne Blue. This color originated with the 1958 Cadillac and was available in the Fender® custom catalog from 1960-1965. This guitar sells from numerous on-line retailers for $119. I found mine at a local brick-and-mortar guitar shop for $119.95 plus tax.

The Bullet Strat is an excellent “modding” platform for those so inclined. The quality of the body and neck on recent (2008 and later) models is much better than anyone has a right to expect given the price point. Most of the drawbacks to this guitar are in relatively minor, easily-corrected areas.

The quality of the necks on these guitars is said to be their best feature, and worth nearly the whole price of the instrument. The body is made of basswood, a fairly lightweight wood with little to no discernible grain (not an issue when painted in a solid color). It is soft, but resonant with tonal properties quite similar to the alder used in more expensive Fender-branded instruments. The body is slightly (approximately 1/10″) thinner than the Fender USA and Mexico Stratocasters®. This helps make a guitar that is easy on the shoulder when played standing up, but can create some minor challenges when using some parts made for standard Fender guitars, as we’ll see later.

I had some very clear ideas what direction I wanted to take this project, but lately I’ve been wavering on some of the details.

My original intent was to collect all of the “mod” parts before actually starting the project, but my son gave me a Fender “aged white” accessory kit consisting of knobs, pickup covers, a switch tip, rear tremolo cover and tremolo arm tip for Fathers’ Day. I had already purchased a vintage style tremolo assembly from an eBay seller, and had a set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings on hand, so we decided to start the project together. All the Photos were taken with a pair of cell phone cameras (HTC and Motorola Droids).

Fender uses two different dimensions for the tremolo bridges on Stratocasters. The Made in Mexico (MIM) and Asian imports have screw spacing of 2 1/16″ from the high-E to the low-E string. The Fender USA Stratocaster part has screw spacing of 2 3/16″ E-to-E. For the Bullet, I can use any Asian or Mexican bridge, but the MIM is a better quality part. The USA bridge could also be used, but that would require plugging and re-drilling at least some of the mounting holes just to use a much more expensive part.

I bought what is supposed to be a Squier Classic Vibe 50s Tremolo on eBay for $21 with shipping. I’m pretty well convinced the seller accidentally sent me a Fender Mexico tremolo, since it has Fender stamped saddles and the tremolo arm hole is offset (the Squier tremolo arm holes are normally centered on the block and the Classic Vibe series bridge saddles are plain).

Here is my Father’s Day gift – a Fender knob/cover kit. For the time being I can’t use:

1) the neck pickup cover (the Squier Bullet has narrow, non-standard pole spacing on the neck pickup),
2) the rear tremolo cover due to dimensional differences and hole positions, and
3) the switch tip until I change out the import switch for a larger USA switch.

So, we cleared the kitchen table and laid everything out on an old towel. I started with my stock Daphne Blue Squier Bullet Stratocaster (made in China 2010), a set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky 9-42 strings, the replacement tremolo and the Fender aged white accessory kit.

After removing the old strings, I removed the rear tremolo cover.

The Bullet Strat’s cavities are coated with what is supposed to be conductive shielding paint to eliminate electrical interference. This is a serious consideration, especially with ceiling fans and compact fluorescent lighting in the house. Here you can see how sloppily the shielding paint was applied.

I decided to test the conductivity of the shielding paint. There should be zero, or near zero, resistance between any two points in the shielded cavities. The readings I got on my digital multimeter show the shielding is bad. I read 66 ohms resistance with the probes less than an inch apart in the tremolo cavity.

The conductance is even worse in the pickup routs. There is no continuity at all between the bridge and middle pickup routs. Next time I open this guitar up to change the electronics I will shield the cavities with copper foil to eliminate outside electrical interference.

Here are the stock ceramic pickups and substandard Chinese electronics. Next time the pickguard comes off, all of this will be replaced with quality USA-manufactured components and AlNiCo pickups.

These potentiometers are actually smaller than dime-sized. They’re functional, but I doubt they will prove to be very durable. The norm for quality electric guitars is a roughly quarter-sized potentiometer.

Here is the stock Bullet tremolo bridge on the left and the new stamped-saddle bridge on the right. The stock tremolo’s string saddles are made of cast zinc, which is not very good for resonance and sustain (try dropping a newer zinc penny on concrete and notice just how “musical” it sounds). The saddles on the new tremolo are folded, stamped steel and should yield a noticeable improvement in sustain.

Here is a comparison of the stock white pickup cover in the front vs. the aged white Fender cover in the rear.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures while changing the tremolo bridge. The process was very straightforward. I just removed the six mounting screws, removed the old bridge, dropped in the new one and replaced the six mounting screws. I left the original tremolo claw in the rear cavity instead of replacing it, since I would have needed to de-solder the ground wire and solder the ground to the new claw.

Next I replaced the covers on the bridge and middle pickups, one at a time.

Before I removed the pickup from the pickguard, I used the depth measurement function on my Harbor Freight digital caliper to measure the pickup heights at both ends of the cover so I could adjust the pickups back to their original heights. Here the bridge and one pickup cover have been replaced. One more cover to go.

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g235/mcintirem/Daphne%20Bullet%20Mods%20v10/10-Cover1.jpg

Here the bridge, two covers and all the knobs have been changed out with the new parts.

Here is the rear tremolo cavity with the springs installed. I didn’t notice before installation that the sustain block on the new tremolo is 4.5mm longer than the stock Bullet sustain block. The springs will actually rub against the inside of the cover if the tremolo is used. This is one of the areas where the non-standard body dimension creates a minor problem. The sustain block could be ground down so the springs clear the cover, but I don’t use the tremolo anyway, so the interference is a non-issue for me. I may upgrade the zinc block to a larger steel one later. If I do, I’ll take the extra steps to make it fit and function as designed.

Here is the guitar strung up with a new set of Super Slinkys.

Finally, here is the end result of the first round of mods to my Squier Bullet:

I’ll follow up with much more substantive (and a few more cosmetic) mods later.

(Fender®, Squier®, Stratocaster®, Bullet Strat® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instrument Company).