Feline Workshop Project : rewire Squier strat

FelineGuitars

This old 1990 Japanese made Squier strat came in for some TLC . 

Customer loves the guitar and is so used to it as it was the first guitar he had, but wants to slowly start looking at what may benefit from an upgrade.
Possibly on the cards were some new pickups, a refret , a steel block for the tremolo and maybe a new nut, but those will be projects for a later date. 

The complaint he had that he wanted to be tackled was noisy, intermittant switch and post and a jack that cuts out.

He decided that we should change out the old ones for some better ones and maybe give a bit of shielding against noise. That way if he came to pop in some better pickups , then the job would be simple and the wiring wouldn't be letting down the new pickups.

Here is a pictorial record of what we did:

Here is the strat before we started work

Lifting the pickguard revealed quite an open cavity - even more so than the 90s USA strats had.

The pickguard guts before we got stuck in

The enclosed 5 way switch and mini pots that they were using on these - time to say goodbye to them

FelineGuitars

We screened the cavity with nickel screening paint - a highly effective compound we have found.

We added a screw terminal into the screening and connected the earth from the tremolo claw and the other wire will go to the back of the volume pot prior to going to the earth side of the jack.

We added some copper foil screening to the underside of the pickguard

A nice sturdy switchcraft jack to replace the somewhat flimsy one that had been there. 

Note the use of a star washer to stop it coming loose when in use.

We love this handy tool from Cruz Tools for tightening jack sockets and pots, and it has the right sizes to fit both USA sizes and metric ones too.
We sell these in our shop as we love the tool so much and they are pretty reasonable at £12 for what is a very solid tool that will last a lifetime.

FelineGuitars

Next we fitted a trio of CTS pots and a nice quality CRL switch (the one with the spring)

We really do like the CRL made switches , nothing wrong with the Oak brand ones but the CRL has a really nice feel and the spring loaded mechanism gives just the right amount of resistance to moving the lever

We like to put a solid earth bus wire across the pots in a strat . note that we sheath it in clear heat-shrink tubing in areas where it might risk shorting against another terminal . 

We used an orange drop capacitor (0.022uF value) for the tone controls

We chose to utilise the same wiring orientation for the connection to the tone controls as is often referred to as 50s Gibson wiring . 

This means that the tone pots feed off the output of the volume pot rather than the input and this yields less loss of high end when turning down the volume pot.

All connected up and ready to go back together now . 

The earth connectors from both the jack and the shielding go to the rear of the volume pot and the hot wire from the jack to the output tag of the volume pot.

OilCityPickups

Lovely job ... by eck that Strat has it's own built in echo chamber doesn't it? Seen more wood on a nudist on a cold day!

FelineGuitars

It's not a bad sounding strat although I'd be looking for a pickup swap from the ceramic bar ones in there

OilCityPickups

I had a Korean candyapple red one that sounded really nice ... partial to a nice Squier. The ceramics are not awful ... just a bit harsh in the high end when played side by side with alnicos. Ceramics need the top end squashed by a hotter wind really ... my Oil City Alligator Tele pickup is ceramic, but the wind is calculated to filter the ice pick top end to a bit. 

FelineGuitars

Yes it's a combo of a low-ish wind and ceramic bars, but not too bad - just lacking a bit of forcefulness or body

dern

Trying to learn more about the theory of these circuits so please don't take this as me questioning what you're doing but me learning... why do you need the earth bus at all if the body of the pots are already connected through the copper foil you've put on the pick guard? Doesn't adding the extra bus create unwanted ground loops?

Thanks,

Mark

FelineGuitars

Over time pots can work loose or dirt and grime (or beer and sweat) get inbetween the copper and the pots and contact gets intermittant. We see this a lot on Fender teles , jags and Jazz basses where Fenders trust in the metal plate is let down.

The earth bus bar ensures that the earth connection stays good, and we try to use a single point for star grounding - back of vol pot is usually the way

The extra loop is pretty minimal here so hum isn't an issue we find

DLM

Wowed for the Olympic-size swimming pool!

dern

FelineGuitars said:

Over time pots can work loose or dirt and grime (or beer and sweat) get inbetween the copper and the pots and contact gets intermittant. We see this a lot on Fender teles , jags and Jazz basses where Fenders trust in the metal plate is let down.

The earth bus bar ensures that the earth connection stays good, and we try to use a single point for star grounding - back of vol pot is usually the way

The extra loop is pretty minimal here so hum isn't an issue we find

Oh I see... that makes a lot of sense and will influence what I do in the future.

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Mark

FelineGuitars

Yes - one thing that guys who do servicing get to learn that some guys purely on the manufacturing side maybe miss out on is all the things that can (and will) go wrong with a guitar once it's been out in the wild for a while. It's useful because you get to learn certain tricks or approaches to make life better or easier further down the line.

If you were starting to design & build Gibson ES335 style guitars now, you'd probably put a back access panel on for when a pot goes down or the player wants to swap pickups, it doesn't all have to come out the F hole.