My husband's made-in-Korea Squier Strat is a frustrating instrument. It's never been set up. That's easily remedied at home, or by our local shop if we want. But worse, the Strat doesn't function properly. Using the trem, even just a little bit, puts the guitar out of tune instantly. The pickups hum, far more than one would expect single-coils to hum. They hum even when two are on in humbucking mode. The hum vanishes when the player puts a hand on the strings, which implies that the guitar is not grounded properly. Also, the control cavity is completely unshielded.

In short, MIK Strats are cheap pieces of crap. I was stuck at home recovering from surgery, and decided to find out just how much I could improve the guitar by replacing parts. Because I'm a nervous novice, I documented the whole thing. I figure it might help some other nervous novice some day.

Starting point

Standard non-locking Fender tuners of mediocrity:

Standard tremelo bridge, and three no-brand single coil pickups:

To remedy the problems, I ordered the following items:

• Sperzel locking tuners
• Gotoh/Wilkinson tremelo bridge
• Seymour Duncan Little '59 for the bridge
• Seymour Duncan APS-2 RW/RP for the middle
• Seymour Duncan Duckbucker for the neck
• a push-pull pot, for splitting the bridge humbucker
• copper sheets for lining the control cavity
• graphite lubricant for the nut
• Graph-Tech and Tusq nut, both pre-slotted, to help the strings slide in the nut slots when the trem is used (not sure which I'll use yet)
• Graph-Tech string trees (somewhat gratuitous)

The bridge is probably the most difficult of all these items to install.

Tools needed:

• Philips screwdrivers, large and small
• 10mm and 11mm wrenches
• rotary tool (such as a Dremel) or drill
• drill press (optional, but makes some tasks much easier)
• center punch or other tool to mark drilling locations
• #36 wire drill bit (2.7mm)
• 3/8" drill bit
• rubber mallet
• soldering supplies: iron, solder, desoldering braid, etc.
• Elmer's glue, or other white glue
• X-acto knife or other hobby knife

You might not need all of these if you don't make all the mods I did.

Start by taking your strings off. I saved mine, because they were new and I thought I might be taking them off and putting them on again a few times. I then disassembled the whole guitar. All you need is a couple of Philips screwdrivers to take off the pickguard and the neck. Hey, that was easy! That's why they call it a bolt-on! If you're in a very humid area, your neck might warp a bit if you leave it without string tension for a few days. So keep that in mind, and work quickly if you think this might affect you. Probably a truss rod adjustment would be all it needs afterward.

Remove the bridge. First flip the guitar over and take off the back plate. Then undo the trem springs. You can leave the claw in place if you want; the Wilky trem uses the same claw. Then remove the screws holding the bridge in place.

Sperzel locking tuners

First, I removed the existing Fender tuners. This was very easy: just a tiny Philips screwdriver to remove the guide screws on the back, and then a 10mm wrench to loosen the sleeves on the front. Unscrew the sleeves, and pull out the tuners, and pack the whole set away in case you need them again some day.

The headstock was already bored out enough to fit the 10mm Sperzel sleeves. The only preparation needed was to drill the guide holes for the tuners. The Sperzel packaging comes with a guide for getting the spacing right. We used a center punch to mark the spot on the wood where we needed to drill. Here, we're using a Dremel rotary tool in a mini drill press to drill the guide holes:

The holes are all drilled. Notice the pre-existing screw holes for the original tuners, slightly smaller than the Sperzel guide holes. We didn't bother filling those in.

Next, insert the tuners. An 11mm socket wrench was handy for tightening up the sleeves. We didn't tighten them very much, though. The tuners aren't quite perfectly aligned. I ought to have drawn a line through the centers of the peg holes, and done the guide drilling along that line. Oh well. They'll work just fine, and I'll do a neater job next time.

Pickups and electronics

The first step is to remove the pickguard. It's attached to the body by two wires: a ground wire to the bridge, and the wires to the output jack. The first thing I noticed is that the ground wire was detached. That would certainly explain the humming. Many import cheapo Strats have "swimming pool" routing. That is, the pickup area is routed out in a large open cavity. This Strat body is routed for three single coil pickups, however. Notice the total lack of shielding in the control cavity.

The electronics. The existing pickups will need to be removed, and all the wiring cleaned up. Note the pitiful amount of shielding on the pickguard.

Here David is removing the neck pickup's ground wire from the lump of solder that holds it onto the volume pot. All the ground leads are attached to the body of that pot, and that's where the ground wire to the bridge used to be attached.

The Duckbucker is now in the neck position, and all wired up. Notice that the Seymour Duncan wiring is much neater than that of the pickups it's replacing. Nicely shielded, too.

I took a break from soldering to line the control cavity with self-adhesive copper foil. You can also use conductive paint to turn the cavity into a little Farraday cage; paint is expensive but easy. The cheapest way to do it is to use aluminum foil and craft glue. I cheesed out with adhesive foil from StewMac, which is expensive and easy.

I lined the control cavity, then added some strips along the top of the guitar. Then I extended the foil on the pickguard to cover more area, and to make sure it would make contact with the strips connecting to the control cavity lining. The multimeter to the left is to make sure the strips are making good contact with each other so current flows.

[To be continued.]

The nut

The next step is to replace the cheap stock plastic nut with a slipperier nut. I chose a Graph-Tech nut, designed to work with trems. I ordered a pre-slotted nut because I'm not quite ready to try filing nut slots.

Nuts are held in place with a light glue and string tension. They should not be hard to remove. You might have to take a razor blade or an X-acto knife to the edges of your nut to break off any glue slop or finish. Our quality Korean Fender product had a big glob of glue on one end of the nut that we had to scrape at a bit. You can tap sideways on the nut to knock it out from the side. We slipped the point of the knife under the nut and levered it up gently. It popped right out. Here's our Strat with the nut removed:

If there's dried glue left over in the hole where the nut was, use the X-acto knife to scrape it off.

Dilute the glue with about three parts water to one part glue. Don't get fussy about this. Just remember that the goal is not to glue the nut down hard. Just use enough glue to keep it in place. String tension will do the rest of the work. Apply the glue with a toothpick. Pop the nut in and get it roughly centered. Put the two E strings back on and get them more or less near pitch. Position the nut exactly where you want it. Then put the other strings on and get the whole thing tuned up. You now have a new nut!

If you're nervous about this, Dan Erlewine's book has more information.

Gotoh/Wilkinson tremolo bridge

Our guitar had a "vintage"-ish trem bridge, pivoting on six screws. The Wilky trem is a newer style and pivots on two posts. If you have a newer Strat or maybe an American Strat, you already have holes drilled in your guitar for the post sleeves (studs). If not, you'll need to drill out holes for the studs. If your guitar doesn't have a trem at all, or if you're nervous about this, Stew-Mac sells a routing template for trem bridges.

I have a vintage bridge, held in by six screws, and you probably do too. The two outermost screw holes are exactly where the Wilky post holes need to be. Use a 3/8" bit and drill using the existing screwholes as guides. Use a dowel jig or drill press to get the holes straight. Notice that we've used tape to mark on the bit how deep we want to drill. You want the top of the stud to be just below the surface of the guitar.

Use a rubber mallet to drive the studs into the holes. This is a one-way trip, so be sure you have the holes deep enough first. You can screw in the posts at the end to drive the studs deep enough down.

Pop the bridge into the routed slot and tuck it into place under the post tops. Don't worry about the height of the posts just yet. You'll get that right later. Flip the guitar over and hook the trem springs on. (I needed mechanical help with this step.) Now the bridge will stay in place.

Notice how much nicer these saddles are than the ones they replaced. Unfortunately, we chipped the finish slightly when we did our drilling, and it's a bit visible. Eventually I'll get some touch-up paint to restore the finish. Also, the screw holes for the old bridge can be filled in with wood, glued, sanded down, and finished. (I care more about how this guitar plays than how it looks. I'll get to it eventually.)

When you've restrung the guitar, it's time to adjust the bridge to set the action where you like it and correct the intonation. Adjust the post height using the largest hex key. Once you have the overall bridge height where you want it, insert the smallest hex key way down inside the post. Find the little lock nut down inside, and tighten it. Adjust the intonation by using the middle-sized hex key to unlock the saddle on top, then the smallest key in the rear to slide the saddle in and out.

Midway point

The bridge pickup and the nut are still to be done. But here's the working guitar:

The finished guitar

And here it is with everything done:

Online merchant reviews

StewMac is expensive, but reliable. I got the bridge and the electronics doodads from them. They're also a good source of specialized tools, if you've got lots of money to burn on such things. They shipped my order promptly and correctly. Their website is well-designed and easy to use.

The bridge pickup and the nuts came from Guitar Electronics. I'm still waiting for the order to arrive, and will report on their reliability once it does.

Musician's Friend is the Walmart of music stores. Probably you should avoid it, and order from them only when you must. They shipped the bulk of my order promptly and correctly. The one piece that was backordered sat for a week untouched, even though their web site said the part had arrived and was in stock. Eventually I cancelled that part of the order and got it from someplace else. (It was especially annoying because the part was the bridge humbucker, the centerpiece of the pickup selection.)

Component reviews

StewMac's shielding kit turned out to be more than I needed. Solder? I already have lots of that. Next time I'll just order a selection of self-adhesive copper foil. I did use the single-conductor ground wire provided. The instructions were clear and well-written English prose; that's rare enough that I must register my appreciation for it.

Pickups are a very personal choice. Which ones work for you depend on the style of music you play and what you like to hear. So I won't review the pickups based on what I think of their sound (though I like that). Instead I'll comment on how easy they were to work with. The Seymour Duncan pickups come with wiring diagrams enclosed. The web site also has good support information and more diagrams. The pickups are solid and have good wires attached, long enough to do anything you need. I had a little trouble threading one of the screws into the APS-2 base.

One year later

So, how did it all turn out? Wonderfully!

The Strat now stays in tune. You can abuse the trem bar heavily and it pops right back, though sometimes I need to haul back a tad to get it to return bang on. (A heavier spring might help there.) The guitar definitely no longer goes out of tune when sitting around unplayed for a few days.

The electronics are dead quiet when in humbucking mode, and still acceptably quiet when tapped. (Single coil pickups will always pick up some interference, hence the invention and name of the "hum-bucker".) I love the SD Duckbucker at the neck. The Little 59 at the bridge is maybe a tad too hot, and out of balance with the others, but no complaints otherwise.

I'm completely satisfied with the rework. It was so much easier to do than I thought it'd be. I had been afraid I'd ruin the guitar. I hadn't done any soldering since I was a kid, so I was nervous about that. All this turns out to be not hard to do! A little care with the tools, and I turned a piece of junk into a decent guitar. Cool!