This was possibly my favourite part of the process: installing the pickups. It really wasn’t that exciting and I mean, finishing the paint job and seeing it turn out beautifully was awesome, but putting in the pickups meant it was ready to go! I called up my friend Rob because he knows what’s up when it comes to electronics and stuff. I also do not own a soldering iron and this would have made the process impossible. So I went over to his house and we began installing the pickups. I had wiring diagrams ready to go, so we got started pretty quickly.
We started with the neck pickup. Seymour Duncan has a video where he installs all the pickups at once, but that’s really confusing. One pickup at a time is much more straight-forward. We desoldered the neck pickup from the switch and its ground wire from the volume pot. Then we took the hot wire from the pickup and soldered it to the switch and left the ground wires unattached so that we could save all the ground wires for one final solder at the end.
It was a very simple process and one that was repeated for the middle and bridge pickups. Attach the hot wires to the proper places on the switch and then solder all the ground wires to the volume pot. The last thing to do before screwing the pickguard back on was to reconnect the ground wire and the input jack wires. We soldered those to their respective places and we were done.
Some things to watch out for and/or make sure of when installing pickups:
· Make sure all new joints are strong. After adding the solder, reheat the joint making sure to touch the wire or metal near the solder without touching the actual joint. This reheat will strengthen the joint. After you’re sure the joint is firm, give it a little tug to make sure the wire won’t come loose.
· Be careful around the soldering iron. I’m sure this is common sense but it was new to me because I’ve never actually used one before. Obviously it’s hot (and I knew that) so don’t touch it, but also be aware of the smoke that it produces and avoid it. My friend said he’s cried many times after getting some of the smoke in his eyes.
· If you’re guitar was wired like mine, your input jack will have two wires: a tip (hot) and a sleeve (ground). Both Rob and I almost missed that and nearly soldered them to the same spot.
That’s really it for the installation process. It was fairly simple and it didn’t take very long. The exciting part was putting it back together and testing it out. We got some killer tones out of it and it was really exciting! I’ll have some videos up with samples soon.
When putting the guitar back together, it’s mostly a reverse order of how you took it apart. Re-attach the neck, bridge, tuners, and all the other little screws that are needed. My buddy noticed while we were testing it out that the company did not cut either the neck or the cutaway straight as my neck isn’t aligned like it should be. Nonetheless, it still works perfectly fine.
So, pickups were in, strings were attached, sound was great. The only problem now was the intonation and some fret buzzing. I attempted to contact a guy I know to help me intonate it but he was nowhere to be found and I was in a rush. The only other option was to learn how to do it myself and so I quickly searched the Internet to find out how (http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/intonate.htm).
I began with the bridge saddles. I knew how they should look (as can be seen in that picture on the project guitar website) and I followed the instructions from the site and I was quickly intonated and very happy. I did notice however that after stringing the guitar, my bridge was now on an incline and looked almost like a Floyd Rose style bridge. To fix that, I loosened the strings and then tightened the springs that are underneath the backplate. Once they are tightened, retune the guitar and all should be well. One thing to really keep in mind when adjusting anything on the bridge is to loosen the strings. Adjusting the saddles, springs, or height adjustment screws (action) will change the tension in the strings and if you’re tightening the tension there is a likely chance you will pull your string too tight or it will break. That’s how I intonated my guitar.
The last thing left for me to do is fix some of the fret buzz. In my case, it is caused by a loose fret and so I need to take it in to have the frets hammered down. I don’t have the tools or knowledge of how to do this properly so I will entrust it to someone else.
Aside from that, this guitar is done and awesome. As I mentioned earlier, I will have samples up within the next couple of days. That’s it for project guitar number one. I will have some of my band updates on here soon as well as show reviews and possibly CD reviews as well.
-- Mike
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