Is this hot rod project plausible?

[chrisdermo]

First time in this subforum. Hi!
Excuse my ignorance, guitars for me have always been little more than a sound source to play through effects pedals, but after 'preparing' my crappy old peavey guitar I've become more interested in I guess more 'professional' modifications.

I have a current model standard Fender stratocaster MIM with S/S/S setup. I want to install a single coil fernandes/sustainiac pickup in the neck position, with a Seymour Hot Rails pickup at the bridge and a Seymour Lipstick RW/RP in the middle position.
On top of that I have a passive 'distortion' pedal and a passive octave up pedal coming to me that i'd also like mounted inside the guitar. The 'distortion' needs a bypass toggle and a knob, the octave up needs a bypass toggle only. I also want a toggle to switch capacitor values for my tone knob between stock and 0.1uF, and an arcade button kill switch.

So that's 3 circuit boards, 5 toggle switches, 1 knob, 1 arcade killswitch and a battery box, with all associated wiring.


Firstly - does this pickup combo make sense? Sustain for the infinite sustain thing obviously, hot rails to give more boost and beef to the bridge sound and the lipstick for the jangly wirey sounds in the middle. Are there any problems this combo could cause I'm not thinking of?

My second question - if I pay a luthier to install all this stuff, will it wreck my guitar's sound through having so many extra cavities? And do you think it's possible the extra switches and knobs will be able to be mounted in a neat way?

Please feel free to tell me to get lost and speak to a luthier, I guess that second question is more for any luthier/modification types on the board who may have experience with space inside strats.

[bloatedsack]

On top of that I have a passive 'distortion' pedal and a passive octave up pedal coming to me that i'd also like mounted inside the guitar.

DEVO did it better:



You could probably do that, though. I dunno how much power all that needs, but if it's really just about routing out a huge area and stuffing everything, then it's certainly possible to do it "nicer" than duct taping your Muff to the guitar.

Taking all that wood out isn't going to make that much of a difference. Matter of fact, I bet if you found a way to lock the trem in place you could possibly use the tremolo cavity to hold a bunch of stuff. I would't pay for it, though, half the fun of something that ridiculous is going to be smashing it all together and enjoying it's style when you're done.

[chrisdermo]

Whatever the second pic is, my browser won't load it :-(
There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if I completed the work myself, the guitar would be 100% destroyed after ten mins. I am worse than useless with woodwork type things. Circuits and soldering I can do, drilling and cutting wood, I can't!

[bloatedsack]

I bought a router and just started cutting one day. I think the only training I took before hand was not getting high, first.

It's easy. I just sort of free handed out rounded ugly holes, didn't care as I was going to cover them with things, anyways. Had I thought in advance, I would've made a bigger template that the route plate of my cheapo router could ride in, but whatever. That would've taken time, and I wanted pickups now. But, using a router is easy. I bought the fitty dollar Harbour Freight trim router and thier budget bit kit.

I suppose it really matters if you're desperate to make this look professional or if you really don't mind a rat rod guitar.

[chrisdermo]

As tempting as that is, other constraints are that I also live in a flat with no outside space, and i already wrecked a guitar by 'preparing' it. I want this one to be totally profesh. Thanks for making me realise a routing tool is so cheap and easy though....... definitely food for thought!

[chrisdermo]

Ok so I got in touch with a luthier. He wanted £80ish to install the sustainer pickup including routing for the battery box, more than reasonable price i think. He wouldn't do the fx internal mounts as he's never done it before, and gave me another luthiers' contacts. That guy wanted £700 to do the whole lot . No way i'm gonna pay that.
So i'm paying the first guy to do the sustainer install, i'll install the hot rails and lipstick before I hand it over to him. When I get it back i'll see what space is left inside and probably do the tone capacitor switch and killswitch myself.

THEN i realised my friend used to be a cabinetmaker, and he owns 3 or 4 routers. He said he'd do the cavities for the pedals for me for free So i can then wire it up myself. Sweet!

I'll post progress pics when this starts happening.

[DRodriguez]

Only thing I'd recommend is look into shielding. My 1/2 size acoustic with fuzz picks up the radio when you gain it too much,

[chrisdermo]

Only thing I'd recommend is look into shielding. My 1/2 size acoustic with fuzz picks up the radio when you gain it too much,

Uh oh. I doubt that'll be the case with the passive stuffs. BUT I will definitely be ready for this. It's some sort of sticky tape type stuff around the cavity right? Perhaps shielding the wires would be enough.

[wafl]

I like conductive paint. Its way easier than faffing about with copper tape. The only annoying thing is painting a big cavity with a brush the size of a nail polish brush.

[chrisdermo]

I like conductive paint. Its way easier than faffing about with copper tape. The only annoying thing is painting a big cavity with a brush the size of a nail polish brush.

Hadn't even thought of that. Any particular brand of conductive paint working well for you?

[bloatedsack]

You can buy cheap copper tape from Amazon that's got conductive adhesive for way less than you can from any music retailer.

[wafl]

Usually hardware stores will have one brand of it. I would expect it all to work about the same as long as you put on a few layers.

[chrisdermo]

excellent infos thankyou