So I have just begun on my new adventure of learning the wonders of a guitar. I have been playing guitar for about 4 years now and have finally begun exploring the inside of what has been my passion over those years. I just began a Bachelor of Engineering degree at Dalhousie University with an electrical engineering discipline. The study of circuits, electricity, and magnetism has greatly influenced this new, sudden adventure I find myself on right now.

My goals for this project:
-          Study and understand the circuits involved in the pickups, control knobs, and switches
-          Modify the electronics in order to maximize the potential of the guitar
-          Break down and reassemble the guitar in order to build myself a custom guitar

After being unsatisfied in my search for a new guitar, I decided it would be awesome to build my own guitar. This way, I would have to be satisfied with whatever I could create. However, in order to do that, I needed to know what it takes to build a guitar. So here I am, practicing on two Strat copies of little value and thus begins my adventure. I just purchased a cheap Jay Turser Strat which I plan on taking apart soon.
Some facts on the guitar:
-   fairly solid for a no-namer guitar, but definitely not something you’d want as a main guitar
-   single coil neck, single coil mid, and humbucker bridge pickups; they look fairly cheap and they sound even worse
-   5-way switch
-   very heavy; shockingly comparable to my big LTD EX400
-   again, decent neck for being basically nothing
-   strings came with guitar are brutal, specifically the high E string, which has seemingly deteriorated at the 5th fret.

I plugged it in for the first time today and it went a little better than expected. Mind you, a Strat is very different from my Explorer-shaped LTD and compared to the EMGs in that guitar, the pickups on the Turser are brutal. I tried all five combinations of pickup usage:

-          Bridge humbuckers were decent, however there was a lot of feedback and way too much background buzz
-          The middle pickup is very quiet. Little background noise, but that’s probably because there is little noise in general.
-          The neck pickups are just bad. Lots of buzz and little tone. They need work.

So that’s it for now; tear down day is approaching and I am getting more and more excited. Keep posted!

-- Mike

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