Acrylic S-Style Solidbody | Various Upgrades

This custom-built Acrylic S-Style Solidbody came into the shop for an electronics check and tentative upgrade. The owner wasn't satisfied with the pickups he'd had installed. The neck and middle pickups were generic single coils, while the bridge was a Seymour Duncan YJM Fury stacked humbucker. 

Upon checking the DCR of the pickups, I was surprised to find that while the neck pickup read 7.32K, the middle was much weaker at 5.64K. Now, it so happened that I had a very nice set of pickups from a 2002 MIM Strat on hand. We decided to replace the existing single/single/YJM trio with these MIM pickups.

One problem with this was that the MIM pickup covers were in bad shape from years of use. Well, we solved this with replacement pickup covers from StewMac. As an added touch, the MIMs were installed with Fender-spec pickup screws and rubber tubing spacers.

Electronics-wise, there was some work to be done. For one, there was only one volume control. No tone controls at all. The volume pot was a generic mini pot that had clearly been installed and deinstalled countless times. I knew it wouldn't be long before it gave up the ghost.

Eventually, this guitar was rewired to the standard S-style configuration, namely volume/tone/tone. There was a little twist, though. Tone 1 was wired to the neck pickup and Tone 2 to the bridge, leaving the middle pickup wide open. 

To recap, electronics upgrades included Alpha A250K pots, a Switchcraft output jack and genuine Gavitt cloth push-back wire. And yes, there's no shielding on this guitar whatsoever. The owner wants the body to be as transparent as possible. Something about visual impact, as I recall. 

After taking care of setup, I found the time to record a little demo of this upgraded Acrylic S-Style Solidbody. It's been uploaded to SoundCloud, so do give it a listen. Thank you very much.

Preinstalled Single/Single/YJM Combo

Neck Pickup DCR

Middle Pickup DCR

Pickups from a 2002 MIM Strat

Cracked Neck Pickup Cover

Worn-Out Middle Pickup Cover

MIM Pickups and Alpha A250K Pots Installed

StewMac Neck and Middle Pickup Covers

Fender-Spec Pickup Screws and Rubber Spacers

Alpha A250K Pots Barely Fit

Genuine Gavitt Cloth Push-Back Wire

Switchcraft Output Jack

Rewiring in Progress

Middle Pickup is Wide Open

No Shielding Whatsoever

Trem Claw Ground Wire