Every guitar player I know wants a new or better guitar. Most of us can not afford to go out and buy a new guitar, but there is another option. Make some adjustments and modifications to your existing guitar. In this article I am going to show you a few tricks you can do that are relatively easy and inexpensive for the do-it-yourself type. I have just finished doing some modifications on my stock Fender® Stratocaster® and I am going to show them to you.

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I have had my Strat® for about eight years now. It was my main guitar for most of that time. It is a very dark maroon color that looks black from some angles and a deep maroon color from others. It is not pearlescent paint, but it kind of looks like it is at times. I have the standard Strat® look of a white pickguard and white controls.

I remember the day I bought this guitar. It was a total impulse buy. It was payday and I made the mistake of stopping by the local music store. As a result I would live on Top Ramen noodles and water until the next payday.

After about five years of playing a lot of outdoor gigs moisture took its toll on this guitar, especially the bridge. If you are familiar with the vintage style saddles then you will know how hard it is to wipe them down after you play. Moisture from dew and humidity slowly rusted these saddles and the bridge underneath the saddles. I finally put this guitar in the case and left it there for two years. I toyed with the idea of getting rid of it, but decided recently to get it out of the case and get it back in good playing condition.

The New Bridge

The first thing on my list of things to do was install a new bridge. After doing some research on vintage aftermarket bridges I decided on the LR-Baggs X-Bridge. www.lrbaggs.com The X-Bridge offered the unique opportunity to add a little #OOPS#e to this guitar. It has built in Piezo pick-ups in the bridge saddles that offer you the ability to play acoustic tones on your Strat® style guitar. Even though I got many years of great sound out of this guitar, I was ready for some changes. One of the huge selling points about the X-Bridge was the fact that you do not lose your stock Strat® sounds. You just add more tonal options to the guitar that can be turned off and on. See my review of the X-Bridge. X-Bridge Review

You can get the X-Bridge from Stewart MacDonald for $107.50 plus shipping.




Changing a vintage tremolo bridge on a guitar is not a hard task in itself. If you opt to go with the X-Bridge it is a little more difficult because there is wiring involved, but that is a subject for another article. For our purposes here we are just going to assume you are replacing the bridge with a regular vintage tremolo. All you need to do is remove the strings, unhook the springs in the back cavity of the guitar and remove the six screws holding the bridge on the front of the guitar. Now put the new bridge on and re-hook the springs. Restring the guitar and you are through the installation part. This is where it can get a little tricky.

Because your new bridge will fit a variety of guitars, it will not be set up properly. You will now need to make adjustments on string height and intonation. If you are not familiar with doing this, it can be time consuming and frustrating. If you are not ready to tackle intonation and set-up you may want to take it to your local music store and have them do it. If you are familiar with doing a set-up and intonation you can go ahead and finish the project yourself and get to playing. I have written an article on intonation and set-up basics if you feel you are ready to try it yourself. Click HERE to read the "Guitar Set-Up and Intonation" article.


New Pick-Ups

One way to breathe new life into a guitar is to change the pick-ups. There is a seemingly endless selection of pick-ups on the market today. Almost every pick-up manufacturer makes a pick-up that will fit your guitar. You should do some research before you buy. Better yet, go to your local music store and try to find a guitar with the pick-ups you are thinking about buying. Some of these pups can get pretty expensive, and if you are not satisfied with them you usually can not return them after you buy and install them. Just remember, you do not have to spend a small fortune to get good pick-ups.

I elected to go with the EMG Select series for this project. You can get these pick-ups from Stewart MacDonald for about $20.00 each. These pick-ups are dual coil humbuckers in a Strat® style single coil size. They are the blade style pick-up so you get a much more uniform sound when bending strings. They also have the solid covers reminiscent of the Fender® "Lace Sensor®" pick-ups.


The only problem was that these pick-ups only came in black. They were also epoxy-sealed pick-ups, so I could not just change the covers to white to match the original pick-up color. I decided I could work around this and it gave me a new idea on how to proceed with the cosmetic changes we are going to talk about next.

Cosmetic Differences

Not all changes need to affect the sound of your guitar. Making cosmetic changes can really sharpen the look of a guitar. I made a few easy and inexpensive changes to my StratÒ to give it a new look. Let’s take a look at these look altering modifications that do not affect tone.

One cosmetic change a person can make to a guitar is to refinish the body. This is a big job and came be time consuming and expensive. I decided that I was going to keep the original finish on my guitar and make the modifications by giving it a little color contrast in other areas. I decided to stay with my original white pick-guard, but change all the controls to black to match the pick-ups I installed. This ended up being a smart decision as the guitar turned out much better than I expected.

Other Options for Contrast

For the sake of argument, let’s say you do not want to change your pick-ups, but would still like to contrast the colors on your pick-guard. Most stock pick-ups have covers that can be changed to a variety of colors. These covers are only a few dollars each, and fit right over your stock pick-ups.

Another option is keep all your stock pick-up and control colors and change the color of the pick-guard. One great place to find a huge variety of new pick-guard styles and colors is Warmoth Musical Products. (www.warmoth.com) You are sure to find something that you like. The hardest part will be deciding which style to go with.

Volume and Tone Knobs

Most stock StratocasterÒ guitars come with the standard FenderÒ plastic bell knob. I wanted to go with something a little different, but I wanted the knobs I choose to look like they could have actually been a standard option on a guitar. I also wanted to change the knob color to match the pick-ups I installed, so I went with black metal dome knobs.

In my humble opinion the chrome dome knobs have a much nicer look than the bell knobs. This may explain my recent interest in the G&L Guitars line (www.glguitars.com) which uses these knobs almost exclusively.



The installation is very simple. Remove the stock plastic bell knob. Loosen the set screw in the side if the dome knob. Put the dome knob on the potentiometer shaft and tighten the set screw.

These knobs gave me the difference I wanted in the looks of my guitar. By staying with the stock white pickguard and adding the black knobs with the black pick-ups I created a contrast that really made a difference in the complete look of the guitar.

You can buy metal dome knobs from Stewart MacDonald for between $3.25 and $4.47 depending on the color option you choose. These knobs certainly give a guitar a classy look.

Lever Switch Knob

I also decided to change the switch knob to black to keep with the contrast factor I had started. This is a very minimal investment of $1.25 through Stewart MacDonald. This is the easiest modification I made. Simply pull the old switch lever knob of and push the new one on. That’s all there is to it.

String Trees / String Retainers

The last thing I did on my guitar was replace the string retainer on the headstock. I was not really happy with the little cheap looking piece of bent metal that came with the guitar. Sometimes these cheaper string trees can rub strings creating weak spots and causing string breakage in the long run.

The other problem created by these cheap string trees is that the string can hang up on them when you use you vibrato causing the guitar to go out of tune. You need to have a slippery surface to assure that the string goes back to the optimal length after a dive-bomb whammy lick There are three options that I recommend to combat these problems.

The first solution is to keep your stock string trees and use "Big Bends Nut Sauce" (www.guitaristonly.com) to lubricate them. This will allow then to move smoothly along the edges of the trees without stressing the string.

The other two options come in the form of new string trees. There are two types that I recommend. The first is the aerospace polymer string retainer made by Graphtec. These retainers are five times more slippery than graphite thus providing substantial a relief in string friction. These retainers retail for $2.95 for a set of two.

The last option and the one I choose to go with is the "Roller String Tree". These string trees have metal rollers that the strings go under. Instead of sliding beneath stationary material, the string rolls on a small wheel elimination the tuning and string friction problems that plague regular retainers. This is very much like the rollers on the bridge of a Floyd Rose tremolo and serves the same basic purpose.

The Finished Product

When I finished the work on my Strat® I was very pleased with the way it turned out. These simple modifications gave me the difference I was looking for when I started the project. I now have a guitar with a more modern look and that sounds great.

I really enjoy the tonal options that the X-Bridge gives me as well as the fact that it is a great looking bridge. LR-Baggs has already received the Gear Heads 2004 Approval award for this bridge. I highly recommend it for the player who wants an all you can eat tonal smorgasbord of sound in their Strat® style guitar.

The EMG Select pick-ups look and sound great. I doubt you will find many other pick-ups in this price range with this kind of quality. There are many others styles and brands of pick-ups on the market, so do some research to make sure you are getting pick-ups you will be happy with.

The color contrast that I was able to achieve gave me a custom look to my guitar. By doing these simple cosmetic changes you will own a guitar like nobody else. There are a huge array of colors and options you can choose from. Be creative. You can be as wild or as tame as you want.



Final Thoughts

I did all of the above modifications for under $185.00 and a little of my time. There were two other parts to this project I did not mention because they are much harder to do. Both involved wiring and many people are just not comfortable with rewiring their guitars. The two other phases of this project were a total rewiring of the guitar and the installation of the LR-Baggs Ctrl-X onboard preamp which gives the X-Bridge more flexibility.

The reason I left these phases out of this article was because I wanted this to be an easy project for the do-it-yourself type with no experience in working on guitars. Unless you are familiar with wiring, I do not recommend that you try to do these projects yourself. If you are familiar with wiring you can get a complete Strat® rewiring kit for $25.50 and the Ctrl-X for $80.47 from StewMac.

I hope this article gives you some new ideas on how to hot rod your guitar. Play on!

Gary Allen
gary@guitargearheads.com

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