I have a Lake Placid Blue Bullet Strat SSS HT arriving today that I bought (brand new) as my first guitar to modify. I’m also waiting on a new pickguard and a Seymour Duncan SH-6 to arrive as my first change. After that, I’m going to look into single coils to put in the neck and middle positions. I mainly play black metal (hence the SH-6), but also shoegaze, emo, goth, and general rock and stuff.
So, any suggestions for things to do? Could be for the guitar in general, or those specific genres. Any suggestions are welcome!
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While you’re at it with the pickups, give the wiring an upgrade as well! Pots and switches on cheap guitars are usually pretty cheap themselves.
Rad, have fun with your project! I’ve made my recommendations in order of priority (in my opinion) if you want to take them on as you save up money rather than all at once.
First and most important: Tusq nut, locking tuners (I’ve had good luck with guitar fetish and musiclily stuff if you’re trying to stay on a budget). The biggest problem with budget guitars is tuning stability, and the culprit is ALWAYS the nut. Locking tuners are a nice to have as well
Second I’d recommend some AlNiCo-v pickups since the squire probably comes with cheap ceramics. Again, if you’re trying to stay on a budget you can get some decent cheap upgrades from FLEOR. I’d recommend something a bit more tame to pair with the duncan distortion if you’re trying to increase versatility, and choose a 4-conductor version so you can…….
Third: switching. Find some push pull pots so you can split your bridge and neck pickups. If you’re trying to keep it darker sounding go with 250k, if you want to brighten up go with 500k.
After that you can look at body shielding, upgraded bridge… but these are really diminishing returns. Also you have to be careful when looking at bridges cuz the screw spacing is different between USA and import models much of the time. The body thickness is also generally thinner on imports too so if you’re doing a trem upgrade you’ll wanna make sure it’s not too thick for the body. I learned about both the hard way but thankfully gave access to good machinists.
Shielding. I don’t think they use shielding paint for the cheap guitars. I live close to a radio mast and it has always made a huge difference adding aluminium tape in the cavities and pickguard.
My Bullet Strat had a thin layer of something sprayed inside. Don’t if it was meant to be shielding or not, but wasn’t thick enough to do much of anything if it was. I lined the cavities with copper tape and it made a big difference.
You can try to make your own shielding paint using cheap acrylic paint and graphite powder, mix in equal proportions and then add a little more graphite to increase conductivity. Plenty of info out there on this, WAY cheaper than ordering on Stewmac and you can make as much or as little as you need
I don’t think anyone has recommended to give the frets and neck some love. Cheap Squiers can have fret sprout, less than level frets, and gloss necks (this is more preference but roughing down to satin with a dish scrub pad or very fine sandpaper feels great to me). I would definitely recommend doing these and making sure your truss rod is properly adjusted so it becomes a guitar you actually want to play rather than a guitar with great electronics that plays terribly.
Fretwork and stuff is up next! This Squier actually feels a bit better to me than my Fender Player Telecaster, which was slightly difficult to realize. The deets are great, though they could be smoother, so I want to polish them up nicely. No sprout or anything, yet.
I recommend wiring the bottom pot as a tone control for the bridge pickup. It’s just a matter of adding a jumper to the 5-way switch. Some strats ship this way, not sure about the Bullet but I think not.
I made this change to a Squier Affinity Strat recently. Well worth it to have tone control on the bridge pup and it only took about 10 minutes.
Yeah, it’s great to be able to roll some of the icepick off of the bridge pickup. Much more flexible.
