Rewire the Squier

So originally my plan was to use the Encore I found in the garage as an experiment with pickups. I read about Fender’s Albert Hammond Jr guitar that wires the 5 way selector up differently and uses ceramic pickups.

When I opened up the Encore I decided that it was never going to be base for a project. It was just horrible. So I went on ebay and found a black squier.

s-l1600 (1)

Perhaps I might have paid a little too much for it. Judging by the branding on the head this isn’t anything special but I wanted one quickly to replace the Encore.

I cut the remaining strings off so I could clip the pickguard off (by cutting the few wires connecting the pickguard load out to the output jack and ground, it’s easier to work on a pickguard and swap parts when its disconnected and easy enough to reconnect once it’s ready) and take a look at the inside of the guitar.

It needs a clean to remove the powder that is in the cavity but otherwise this guitar is fine. I will take the pickups from this and pop them in the Encore and drop the ceramic pickups I ordered into here and attempt to wire them up non standard.

Since I have it open I might as well give it the copper tape shield treatment once it’s clean. There’s a strange patch that is on the body but was underneath the pickguard that is almost like it’s been burned. Soot and some disfigurement of the body surface. I’ll never know what happened but it doesn’t entirely clean and polish off.

The pickups arrived from China. These were Wilkinson Lic Cream ST Strat Vintage Voice Single Coil Pickups (Link to Wilkinson pickups on UK Amazon). So swapped out the existing pickups and installed these.

I want to wire these pickups differently from the standard 5 way based on the kind of wiring seen in the Fender Albert Hammond Jr signature guitar. It looks like I can achieve that by swapping the neck and mid active/hot wires to the selector switch. So position 1 will be the mid pickup, 2 will be neck and mid, 3 will be neck, 4 will be neck and bridge and 5 will be bridge.

So a little solder work later everything is connected.