Found some time tonight to work on the GRX40JE. Started the ball rolling by cleaning and polishing the pickups with both Autosol and Waxco Nano Tech polish. You're probably familiar with Autosol by now. It's my go-to metal cleaner and polish. A word about the aforementioned Waxco product, then. Though it's "specially formulated to clean and polish all types of plastic lamp covers," it also works great on dirty pickguards and pickup covers.
Now that the pickup covers were relatively clean, the pickups were reinstalled in the pickguard. Interestingly enough, the single-coils and humbucker required imperial-sized height adjustment screws. This meant Fender US-spec countersunk screws for the single-coils, and DiMarzio-spec screws for the lone humbucker. Following this, as the single-coil imperial-sized screws were shorter than their metric counterparts, they were paired with rubber spacers instead of springs.
Next on the agenda was wiring in new full-sized Alpha A500K pots, a Gotoh DM-50 selector switch, 0.047uF tone cap; and Switchcraft output jack. I'd previously soldered on a new trem claw ground wire, so all that was needed was to make a few connections. Or so I thought. Flipping the body over, I realized that I hadn't leveled the back cover screw hole plugs yet. Couldn't do that tonight, as the neighbors were already fast asleep. This is one of the downsides of not having an indoor workshop. Ah well, we'll put further wiring on hold until those plugs have been taken care of.
Could there be something else to do instead? Oh yes, the Korean replacement tuners I'd ordered from
Reco Music are already here. Might as well install them. Sorry, no go either. The existing tuner holes are way too small. This means some reaming, which needs to be done outside the house. Guess I've no choice but to watch something on Netflix or tune in to Spotify. Which is exactly what I'm doing as I type this, listening to my favorite
Alleycats soppy love songs.
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| Pickups after a good clean and polish |
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| Rubber spacers for the single-coils |
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| Imperial-sized pickup height adjustment screws |
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| Pickguard wiring completed |
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| Alpha A500K pots and DM-50 selector switch |
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| Switchcraft output jack |
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| Back cover screw hole plugs |
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Replacement tuners do not fit
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