Today I bring you more guitar stuff! I’m learning how to set up guitars properly by making my Squier Silver Series play great. When I used to do this kind of stuff ten or fifteen years ago, pickings were slim. Now there are so many good-quality free resources on YouTube and elsewhere providing all the information you might need to fix up your guitar. Here are some of my favourites:
This is what I’ve done so far:
- Refloated the bridge: I blocked off the tremolo years as I always had difficulty keeping this guitar in tune: after following the advice given in video linked from my previous post, things are much better
- Polished the frets
- Set the action via the truss rod and saddle height adjustments
- Set the saddle heights for proper curvature using my new radius gauges
- Replaced the original strap buttons with Schaller-compatible strap buttons
Things I’m hoping to do over the next few weeks:
- Replace the tuners with locking tuners
- Replace the nut with a graphite unit or file and lube the existing nut properly
- Tweak or remove one or more string trees
- Clean up the electrics with some contact cleaner
This guitar is by far the most customized guitar I own. If you’re observant, you’ll notice that the pickguard, pickups and string trees at the very least are not original. The guitar was originally equipped with single-coil pickups in the standard Strat configuration. I replaced all the pickups years ago with custom units. I don’t remember what the single coils are, but I do know that the humbucker I installed in the bridge position is some kind of Kent Armstrong Motherbucker. Due to the HSS pickup configuration, I replaced the pickguard. The original was a single-ply black pickguard (nonstandard number of screws). The pickguard you see in these photos is a standard 11-screw three-ply (black-white-black) HSS item. Interestingly (to me, at least) even this isn’t the first alternative pickguard I installed on this guitar. Once upon a time, I had a mirror (reflective) pickguard in my best imitation of Philip Lynott’s mirror bass. Unfortunately, mine was plastic (unlike Phil’s chrome pickguard) and it did not do well with my nasty, nasty sweat.
Now, the photos. First, the glamour shot:
Then the headstock:
And, finally, a strap button:
By the way: that fingerboard wear is real. This guitar has been played hard over the years. No relicing for me!
Anyway, I am going to customize the hell out of this guitar.