My Squier Vintage Modified Telecaster Custom upgrade

[KRamone27]

I've owned this tele for about 4 years and it was a birthday gift from my wife. The tone pot for the bridge pickup never really worked and the money and timing was right so I placed a pretty good size order from guitar parts resource and got everything I needed to upgrade all the electronic components. For the upgrade I used a Switchcraft shorty 3-way toggle switch, 2- .022 Sprauge orange drop caps, 2- 500K cts audio taper pots for the volume controls, 2-500K cts linear taper pots for the tone controls, Switchcraft 1/4" mono jack and vintage style cloth covered wire. I had to enlarge all the holes for the volume and tone controls and jack to 3/8" for the US made pots and jack.

The way it looked before


And the after

[KRamone27]

And the obligatory progress shots.

[KRamone27]

[GattonFan]

Nice! I like taking those Squiers and moddding them! Great looking axe. How's it sound?
Dennis

[dubtrub]

You just made a great guitar even better. I love those Squiers, especially the new J.Masic Jazzmaster and Classic Vibe Tele. Guitars of premium quality for a little over three hundred bucks can't be beat.

[KRamone27]

Nice! I like taking those Squiers and moddding them! Great looking axe. How's it sound?
Dennis

Squiers are great modding platforms, the necks and bodies are great and are made from quality woods just wish the electronics were up to par with the rest of the guitar. The stock pickups sound great so that's why I kept them instead of replacing them. Since I sold my Marshall (the only amp I had) I have no real way of hearing the difference the upgrade made all I have now is one of those fender tone master mini amps so it's hard to get a good tone from them.

You just made a great guitar even better. I love those Squiers, especially the new J.Masic Jazzmaster and Classic Vibe Tele. Guitars of premium quality for a little over three hundred bucks can't be beat.

Thanks Danny, for the money you can't beat them. I've been gasn' for the bsb 50s' telecaster since it came out, pine body with alnico V pups what more could you ask for.

[oipunkguy]

hey kev. cool job. i was going to buy a fender version years back but decided not to because i couldnt get a tone I liked out of the fender humbuckers. have you ever tried the reverse ground effect on the pickups? it's something gibson use to do in the 90's to there LP's and SG's. you just reverse the pickup ground to the opposite volume pot. i.e. you bridge hot still goes to the bridge volume lug but the bridge pickup ground gets grounded to the neck volume ground. you also got to bridge all the guitar grounds to all the pots except DONT ground the two volume pots to each other.
what this does is when one volume is 0-0.5 and the other volume is at 10 the middle position becomes a new tone. what it really is is just bleed through. it's sounds similar to an out of phase tone but still humcancelling. I perfer doing this mod on any guitar setup like a gibson and it doesn't effect anyhting else how the guitar functions.

[KRamone27]

I might have to try that one day. But you know I like to keep it simple, this guitar is lucky it still has both pickups.

[oipunkguy]

i know, but again, you would still be making all the same soldering as you did before you just flip-flop two wires. i'd have to look at the inside on my LP again, but i think gibson did this wiring slighly differently. they have a metal grounding plate inside the cavity that all the electronics attach to and the bleed through is done through the plate, whereas my version is done without the need of one.

here's a pic of an LP i wired up this way. follow the wires going to the volume lugs.