Sharing my pickguard / pickup replacement project for my Tele.
This was my stock Am.Std. Tele (4 hrs ago
). I didn't have much choice on the color when I bought it because it was on sale. I just want a tele that twangs, and this one sounded the best in all american teles I tried in the store. Believe or not, i bought it from Best Buy - an electronic/appliance store in the US (parang Electroworld+Blims, hehe). Anyway, I found it a bit plain-looking, and I'm itching to start a new project. I looked around the net and found that black pickguard gives it more character. Also, I found some teles with humbucking pickups and I got curious. Knowing that American Standards are now HSH routed, I wanted to maximize that so I decided to go with a humbucker. I have a Gibson 490R sitting around so might as well use it. So I looked for a black pickguard with a neck humbucking hole in ebay and bought it.
Here's the tele stock:
I opened it up and while I was at it I took photos to document what's inside. It has HSH rout and and CTS pots.
Issues Encountered:1. The Gibson pickup has long legs. The neck pickup rout of the tele is shallow and unlike Les Pauls, it doesn't have deep holes for the pickup legs. I didn't want to rout the guitar. So I looked around and found an Epiphone Probucker pickup coming from my FX/PRO, which had shorter legs. I placed it inside the neck pickup rout and it fitted perfectly.
Continuing on, before I finalized the installation, I tested the pickup first if it will sound okay. I was lazy to solder, so I clipped the neck humbucker and connected it to an A/B box, and then plugged the tele to the other terminal of the A/B box. I tested A (neck), B (bridge), and A and B (neck + bridge), and I was satisfied with the sound. I then attached the pickup to the pickguard and soldered it.
I tested the guitar first before I screwed the pickguard. The neck humbucker volume matched the bridge. It sounded a bit bassy, probably because the pot is 250k, but it was okay because it sounded good when I combined it with the bridge pickup (middle position). In the future, I might change it, pero not now, dami pa naka pilang GAS, hehe.
Another issue encountered:- The pickguard did not fit perfectly, although the holes seemed to line up perfectly. The part beneath the 22nd fret of the fretboard is being blocked, as well as the part touching the control plate.
- I sanded those areas with a 150 and 280 grit sandpaper and it fixed the issue
Then after fitting the pickguard, I screwed it into position, and it fit 99% perfectly. Now my tele looks like this:
I'm satisifed.... for now
I hope this will help other people who will try a similar project. What I love about this project is that I used what I learned here in the forum... specifically sanding of pickguards.
Now, next step for me is to research what humbucking neck pickup would work well with a 250k pot and will fit to a tele humbucker rout. Any suggestions?
