Franenstein Tele on Steroids

I got a great mod a few years back, a Mexican Telecaster to dress to the 9's.  A customer brought in his Clapton Strat for some work and in conversation, he said he'd love to have the overdrive chip from the Clapton Strat in his Tele.  That is a pre-amp, powered by a 9V Battery and controlled by the bottom knob on the strat.  As it's turned up, the nice creamy overdrive kicks in.  He got the components on E-Bay, along with new tuners and the cool perloid pick guard, and I set to work.

After disassembling the instrument, I needed to route some space to accommodate the circuit board and battery and of course, the inevitable extra wires.  Next, I had to rewire mini potentiometers to make room for the extra pre-amp boost control.  Instead of the usual 250K pot for volume, I wired in a 25K to handle the post end of the overdrive circuit.  For more fun, I replaced the 3 Way switch with a 4 Way switch, adding two options when both pickups are selected; Parallel, and Series.  The customer supplied me with new black tuners, control knobs, and the perloid pick guard to dress it up.

I put the guitar in his hands, he turned it up, played with the controls, played his heart out and smiled with eyes sparkle!

Check list in preventave maintanence

You're at the gig and all set up but your guitar's dead in the water.  One of your control pots has loosened up.  You noticed it the last few times you played but ignored it.  Now it's dead and you have no spare guitar.  This might have been averted if you stayed on top of the situation.  You don't need a box of fancy tools to keep your ax in working order.  Things like the control pots, jack and other things come loose after a while.  Here is a check list you can go over when you change your strings.
While the strings are off:

1. Check to see your tuners are tight. The tuners are secured to the headstock by one or two wood screws from the back and a nut/washer/bushing through the top.  The nut comes loose from time to time.  The common size nut driver or wrench is 10 mm for the nut.  If you're very careful, you could use a pair of pliers but whatever you use, snug the nut tight.

2. Their is usually a small screw on the end or tip of the tuning button.  If you could wiggle the tuning button it's time to tighten the screw.  Don't tighten it as far as you can, just a little so the tuner doesn't wiggle.

3.  While you're at it, take some 0000 steel wool and clean all the crud off the fingerboard and frets.

4.  Now for the controls;  Plug in, turn up, and wiggle the jack (just a little)  If it crackles a lot it may be time to replace the jack.  In any event, see if the nut holding the jack is not too loose it may be possible to tighten the jack, and the control pots from the top without having to get underneath.  The trick is to snug all this down before it get so loose that it rotates round and breaks a wire. 

5. Check the pickups and mounting rings.  Sometimes they too loosen up and the pickup falls inside the pickguard or pops right out.  I was in the middle of a gig in a pit band when I discovered one of the screws holding my pickup down had vibrated up.  The pickup touched my G string and I could not play that string till the break or end of night when I could fix it.

6. Inspect your cords too; they all go bad sooner or later, even the Monster cables.

7. Got a battery in the ax?  Musically speaking, a 9V battery is considered dead below 7V.  If your guitar is quick change for the battery, carry spares.  Some are not so easy to get to on the fly on stage.

Happy Picken!