On the bench on this (long) session is Will's much-loved old Made In Korea Squier Strat. A very nice old laminate-bodied guitar. Some people aren't fans of the laminate construction but in my opinion they're every bit as good as a solid wood guitar. The plan for this one was to replace the original bridge with a Wilkinson upgrade, swap over the pickguard for a new and better-fitting one... and give the guitar a full set up, including Tusq nut and precision fret levelling.
I spent some time off camera getting the basic geometric set up to my target before starting filming. First step in the set up was to replace the nut... and here the first diversion occurred. In their wisdom Squier tooled their production for a 3.5mm 'front-to-back' nut width. Fine for them, but hopeless for the rest of us wanting to upgrade or replace the nut in the future. There are no Tusq nuts at 3.5mm... the max being 3.20ish. The result of fitting a Tusq replacement would be a forward lean which would be unacceptable... so the only option is to create a custom nut. This can be done either from a blank block or by 'amending' the nut I bought for it. The 2nd option is easier in that you start out with the correct string spacing and *only* have to graft on some extra Tusq before sanding back to the precise snug-fitting thickness. You can see from this video that by 1hr 30mins I was only just finishing tweaking the new nut slots. That's 90 minutes of time thanks to the mismatch between the original slot and modern nut replacements. To be fair, GraphTech themselves could solve this by simply adding 0.25mm to the thickness of their nuts. I'm happy to thin them down to modern USA Fender thickness of approx 3.2-3.3mm but I'm stuck when they start out not thick enough.
The fret levelling part of the process was also straightforward - and effective, resulting in a lovely low and light action.
Off camera I was going to do the fret re-crowning, sanding and polishing but I got stuck into the bridge replacement instead... No matter how many times I re-measured, re-drilled and fitted the bridge with the gold screws supplied, each time it 'bound up' i.e. stiffened as more screws were fitted to a point where it wouldn't work satisfactorily. In many previous experiences of fitting new bridges I'd only ever had this problem when there was a mis-match between the tremolo screws and the bridge plate. The screws have to be the exact right size with enough play to allow for tiny positioning variations. Any larger and they bind and lock up on tightening. Finally after trying another gold set from another Wilkinson bridge (exactly the same, no good) I resorted to the only other set I had; 6 quite a lot smaller screws. These worked well, so that's what I went with as I had no alternative.
And then on to the replacement scratch plate which one can only hope is a good match....unless it isn't; and this wasn't. Too many years and design changes between this MIK Squier and whatever an eBay seller was selling as a 'Squier-compatible' pickguard. The result was that I had to modify both the pickup routs AND the plate itself to get it to even fit; and even then it would not come close to butting up to the neck heel - which was a large part of why Will wanted to change it. So I had to compromise (again) with this component. The problem would be the same for me as it was for him; I could buy half a dozen different Strat pickguards and still not find one that would snuggle up flush to the neck heel curve AND place the pickups over the cavities correctly... To do that would cost him and me a lot more time and money with no guarantee of getting it right - short of hand-making a custom plate; itself a time-consuming (and expensive) process.
So after more than 5hrs on and off camera I had the set up done; and the end result is a lovely low and light action; very playable. But a marathon that goes to show that as soon as you're anywhere near the territory of 'non-standard' you should expect trouble and a big serving of frustration!

свернуть