Sunday, February 05, 2012

Squier California Series Strat Upgrade | Part 8

Related Posts
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Finishing Touches

The upgrade job on Blackie is nearing completion. These are the completed mods at the time of writing:

  • Aluminum foil shielding
  • CTS 250K pots
  • Oak Grigsby 5-way selector switch
  • 0.022µF and 0.047µF capacitors
  • Fender Tex-Mex pickups
  • Switchcraft #11 output jack
  • Ground lug from volume pot to body cavity shielding
  • Vaughan-Wacker Strat Wiring Mod
  • Five tremolo springs
  • Wooden tremolo block


The Vaughan-Wacker Strat Wiring Mod incorporates two wiring schemes: the Fender Jimmie Vaughan Stratocaster and "Gibson ‘50s wiring on a Stratocaster," the brainchild of guitar guru Dirk Wacker. By the way, I'm going with a .022µF cap for the neck pup tone pot and a .047µF cap for the bridge pup tone pot. Now, on to the pics.




Vaughan-Wacker Strat Wiring Mod




Pots and Switch Wired In




Closer view of the switch and pots.




After wiring in the pickups.




Fender Tex-Mex Pickups




Closer view of the pickguard wiring.




Wiring Completed




Five springs and a wooden tremolo block.




Awaiting Aged White Fender knobs




6 comments:

  1. Excellent work.another guitar saved by cikgu.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the positive feedback, sifu. This is only the 2nd time that I have not grounded the volume and tone pots' casings with a wire; thanks to your advice about ground loops :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello!

    Hey, these might be some completely silly question but I am really confused.

    1. It would seem to me that the jack, the volume pot and the common of the switch are all a big electrical common point. Is this intended? How does that work?

    2. Aren't the tone pots wired to anything else? I imagine you isolated them from the shielding, but if that is the case, how do they perform their function? Or maybe they don't?

    Obvs I don't know electronics enough.

    Thanks for the clarifications!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dawncloak, thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. I have sent you an email, hope it helps to clarify a few things. Have a nice day :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey there!

    Unfortunately I haven't received any message at all!

    Could you please send it again to crissaegrim1 [x] hotmail.com ?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Have done so. Hope this one reaches you.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for dropping by. All comments are highly appreciated.