Friday, February 19, 2010

The Package Is Here! The Package is Here!

This is my care package from Guitar Parts Resource. That's a Switchcraft jack, a black jack cup, a black replacement Tele neck pickup cover, some wire, an orange-drop cap, a Fender 4-way switch, a 250K solid shaft pot for volume and a 250K solid shaft No-Load pot for tone.

My goals for the project are: get the guitar as black as possible, with a black instead of chromed pickup cover and a black jack cup; learn guitar wiring enough to be able to help others; to try to get part of that Esquire butt-kicking with the no-load tone pot getting out of the way, and getting most of the benefit of the Baja wiring. I might get a push-pull to get the phase reversal later, but series/parallel seemed like the greater win.
  


But I can't really put this in the win column yet.

What you see to the right are the volume and tone knobs sitting on top of the guitar, trying in vain to fit through the holes in the control plate. And my knobs don't fit, either.

Yeah, I seem to have bought the wrong pots. I guess I should've gone for split-shaft pots instead. I guest I MUST go for split shaft. Live and learn, right? I was planning on putting the old stuff in place on my old control plate and keeping them like that, but as I don't think I can just get replacement pots quick, I thought I might do what I can -- change the pickup cover, jack, switch, etc -- and finish the rest when I get the 2nd set of pots.

What Fender guitar are solid-shaft pots in anyway?

TDPRI has good posts on seating a jack cup, which is good because the clip and cup are too far for the jack right yet. I intellectually understand the steps for the cover -- remove the pickup, unsolder the tabs, bend them out and away from the windings, remove (heating to loosen wax if necessary), carefully put new cover on, bend tabs into place, solder new ground. Thanks to friend-of-the-blog Patrick for his gift of soldering iron and solder. I'll say more as this job progresses.

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