Squier Upgrade : DIY Fever – Building my own guitars, amps and pedals

Squier Upgrade

Background

This is my first guitar ever – still remember butterflies in my stomach the day I got it . At the beginning it was fine because I didn’t know better. After I got my second guitar (and then third) I never really got to play it because it was just much worse than the others. I wouldn’t get much money for it even if I sold it, but it’s hard to part with the first guitar anyways.

Mods

The most annoying thing about stock Squier are it’s pickups – low output, very muddy, without any definition and clarity and also very noisy. Potentiometers turned scratchy after a while and switch was probably not the best there is. Like many other Strats, this one developed twisted neck after few years. Nothing serious, but enough to make it less comfortable to play. Also, standard 6 screw tremolo is not usable at all. One sligh touch of the tremolo bar makes it go out of tune. Since I already have two guitars with Floyd Rose and I don’t really like Strat trems (or compatible aftermarket upgrade tremolos) I decided to tighten tremolo springs and use it as a fixed bridge. For any tremolo work I still have my other guitars.

I got a really good deal on two Kinman pickups: AVn-62 for bridge and AVn-56 for neck, got new alpha pots and OAK three-position switch. Also, auto-locking Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners were a bargain, so whole upgrade cost me less than 50€ including shipping! Those auto-locking tuners are interesting little buggers. When installing new string first few turns of tuner peg will lock string in place and only after that tuner actually starts to rotate.

Few words on wiring: it features three position switch, one volume and two tone pots. I left old middle pickup in just for cosmetic purposes but it’s not connected at all. First switch position selects first pickup, third position is neck pickup and middle position turns both pickups on. There are separate tone controls for bridge and neck pickups (something like Les Paul without separate volume pots).

Update (Sept 2008)

After I brought this guitar with me on a business trip to USA (this was supposed to be a bonding experience since it didn’t see a lot of playing before) I found out I really got used to having a humbucker in bridge position. I got a good deal on a used Seymour Duncan JB Jr (older version) single sized humbucker and installed it, with Kinman AVn-62 moved to the middle position. At this point I could replace 3-way switch with 5-way switch to get two more sounds, 3-way switch only gives separate pickup sounds. I like JB Jr, it’s a bit on the treble/hi-middle side, but it’s a good thing for pickup as it won’t sound muddy at all and I can still control bass on the amp.

Update (May 2010)

After almost two years of playing since the last upgrade, I could never got the JB Jr. to work well with the Kinmans. Amp settings that are good for one would suck for the other. JB Jr. has way too much power and different frequency response. That’s why I decided to take a step back and get something more reasonable. I narrowed down choice to a couple of DiMarzio noiseless pickups and grabbed one of them on the FeeBay – DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Blues.

On paper, it sounds like a perfect choice – slightly hotter and a tad fatter than the regular bridge pickup, it should complement the Kinmans well. While messing with the guitar, I grabbed the chance to swap the switch with a 5-way one, replace saddles with Graphtech (narrow model for import Strat) and swap the pots. DiMarzio site says that 500K controls work best with this pickup, so I replaced the volume pot with a 500K CTS pot. Tone controls have nothing to do with bridge pickup, but I replaced them with some CTS no-load 250K pots that I had lying around just to try them out. Also, I replaced the two 22nF caps with a single cap like on any other Strat.

Results are awesome! Virtual Vintage Blues works perfectly, slightly edgier bridge pickup but still very Strat like. It’s also calibrated well with the Kinmans. There’s no heaven-to-hell change when switching from bridge to middle or neck pickup as it used to be. It safe to say that this is as good as it gets without changing body or neck. Tremolo could be upgraded, but since I don’t use it, saddle upgrade is sufficient…for now