RRC <\/a>and someone suggested the smoke color might just be plating — some metal polish might make that grimy look come right off. And it did, with a minimal effort. Check it out — the left one is what I polished and the right one is the stock color, already starting to tarnish.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_tuners.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Of course, at this point, I’ve already bought all new chrome parts for everything — and twice for the tuners! — but that’s lesson #1: I could have just polished away most of the things I didn’t like. Tuners…done.<\/p>\n
Took off the bridge and dropped the new one in, direct replacement, no problem. Studied the position of the saddles before, set the new one to match so I don’t have to mess with the intonation much. And when I looked at the old one, I see that the plating has already started coming off from where I rest my hand. Wish I’d noticed that sooner!<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_bridgewear.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
But still, I don’t want to strip this thing unless I have to, and replacing it is fine. Bridge…done.<\/p>\n
String trees, knob, and jack plate are all simple enough — unscrew one, screw another on. I have a bit of a custom guitar knob fetish, and the new one was a huge visual improvement.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_knobs.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The trees were upgraded to the nice roller style intstead of the t-claws, which I dislike. And since it still doesn’t fit quite as snugly, I will probably find the old one and polish off the smoke and keep the hardware original. So string trees…done.\u00c2\u00a0 Jack plate…almost done.<\/p>\n
The pickup and the mounting ring seemed simple but I was nervous. I’m taking out a Seymour Duncan SH-8 and putting in an SH-4 — same wiring diagram and the same manufacturer. Can’t ask for easier, and even though I had the wiring diagram, I could have just looked at what was in there when I opened it up and made sure my new wires looked the same. The only thing I note is how much smaller the new pickup is compared to the monstrously magnetic old one.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_pickups.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Got the mounting ring on with some trial and error and…could not find my soldering iron.<\/p>\n
Went to hardware store. Got new, small, cheap battery-powered soldering iron. I suck at it, so let’s not get more power than I need, right? Problem is, it says it is 700 watts or so, but it doesn’t get hot enough to melt the existing solder. I get everything installed up to the point of the guitar actually making noise again — I soldered a weaker connection fine but failed at dislodging the old solder point. Argh. But I did manage to change the guitar’s look from this:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_before.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
to this:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/blog\/esquiregt_chromedout.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And I think that’s good.<\/p>\n
Kat needed to go to the hardware store the next day so she picked me up another, heavy-duty soldering iron. 950 watts, woof woof. I plug it in, it heats up, and that solder goes SPLAT. Awesome. I stick the new wires on, run upstairs to test it (tapping the pickup, then just one spare string) and…nothing.<\/p>\n
Well, something. I get hum. I crank the amp and get a tiny little sound. But something somewhere is not working, not wired correctly. Something is broken or cold or connected wrong. But when I plug in a working guitar, it’s clear that there’s a huge problem. And the volume knob is hot to the touch; did I ground it wrong? No — I just got that thing SO HOT and there is so much solder coating the back of it now that I may have destroyed it. It’s a cheap potentiometer — $2 to $10 depending on how fancy you want to go — but it’s not functional in the meantime. RRC once again advised on how to figure out where the problem is with a multimeter, and if it’s the pot, I’ll need to order a new one.<\/p>\n
This is just another example of me not being able to create anything that isn’t made of words. I find it very disheartening. I can build a PC but I can’t wire a simple circuit. Why?<\/p>\n
UPDATE: Some friends at RRC advised on how to sniff out the problem. I didn’t ruin the pot, but I did snap one of the wires from the jack. Installed a new jack, now it works…but I still think it might be a little noisy, and I suspect there’s a grounding problem because there’s a small tick sound whenever I touch a metal part.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel like it’s 95% of the way there.<\/p>\n
UPDATE 2: I took it to Greg and he fixed the grounding problem for me. What can I say? I need help. But the guitar is exactly what I wanted it to be now — it’s epic in all respects. W00t!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago I mentioned that my holiday haul included several cool parts for a Fender Esquire GT I’ve been wanting to modify — improve the looks, mellow out the tone. A reader even contacted me to see how … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/blog\/esquiregt.jpg\")
A few weeks ago I mentioned that my holiday haul included several cool parts for a Fender Esquire GT I’ve been wanting to modify — improve the looks, mellow out the tone. A reader even contacted me to see how it was going, and I promised I would blog about it when I got it done. It’s a simple design, as you can see — half the wires that come out of the pickup will just be terminated as ground wires. Famous last words on the previous post on this topic: “Hell, it’s only one pickup with one knob — how hard can it be, right?”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/rrc\/tuners1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n