I See What You Did There

My little rant on eBay led to a fellow in FLA contacting me about what I wrote. Seems my new friend Mike felt the same way about people over-paying for poorly made guitars on eBay. Mike is attempting his first built-from-scratch electric guitar, which can be a nerve wracking, trying experience. Mike's enthusiasm got me back to work on a few projects I've had twisting in the wind and I'm glad for it. The first project is customization of a handsome blue Hyde NH Strat that has gold hardware. The guts were already replaced from stock with a S/S/H pickup configuration. The stock scratchguard was a boring white so that had to go. I kept an eye on the eBay auctions and checked sale prices at the major brick & mortar guitar stores like Sam Ash and The Guitar Center. There is more competition on eBay, and a wider variety of brand names are being offered there. That's the great thing about auction sites - if someone else wins this time there is going to be a near-identical auction within a day, week or month. One never really has to pay more than their set price if one is willing to wait. Slowly but surely I compiled new components for the Hyde NH Strat. Replacing the stock pickguard is a nice blue pearloid model which also has the S/S/H arrangement. Keeping the Strat look but losing the sound, I'm going with a GFS Gold Boutique Lipstick pup at Neck position; a Fender Lace Sensor Gold single coil at Mid pos and a Wilkinson Gold Humbucker at Bridge. I got a roll of copper adhesive-backed tape foil and outlined the flip side of the scratchguard where the electronics will touch. Solder was applied where sections of copper overlap to give a unbroken trace pattern. I put the pickups in place and now we're waiting for pots and switches to come in from a electronics supply store.