My first real guitar modification journey

[LaceSensor]

Howdy.

Earlier this year I picked up a Squier Telecaster Paranormal Cabronita which has turned into my first adventure into proper modding.
(Ive assembled guitars before but not done marked reconfiguration work...)

This is essentially a Telecaster thinline with a Cabronita layout, but instead of filtertrons, its got jazzmaster sized pickups.
Bought sight unseen from a Reverb listing of a bricks and mortar in Scotland (I am about 4 hours away) it was listed as new but I guess ex display. WAs SUPER cheap (about half MSRP).

I liked the guitar immediately - its super light at about 6lb on the nose, and really lively, resonant, and loud acoustically. You would expect that of a thinline tele perhaps, but theres something about this one. Ive had others that havent been as alive sounding.

It wasnt all honey moon though, the pickups are I beleive pretty closely related to the Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster pups in that they are more like P90s than actual vintage JM pups. The position of the pickup selector also was a position I never normally approve of being right at the back. These two things gave me some ideas.

Stock photo



From here I decided I definitely wanted to change the pickups. I got a set of Fender 65 Vintage (used in various reissues from the US, as well as for example the Troy Van Leeuwen signature JM) from Reverb for about £75 which I felt was good value. I really wanted that JM sound, or at least to see how close I could cop that vibe in a lightweight tele format. I also said that if I was doing that I would of course shield the guitar and replace all the wiring and inevitably budget af components.

Pre mod. Suprisingly the pickups have cloth wire which is neat touch. The rest of the shit, not so hot!


Copper tape a plenty.


In doing all this I wanted to re-locate the toggle switch to the "les paul" position. This left the slight dilemma of what to do with the extra hole in the front of the body. Solution - killswitch.



these were from Amazon and I got a pack of 10 so if they flake out I can keep swapping them. For now I can say it works and does the "thing" you expect.
I wanted something small, chrome ideally, and these are 12mm cut out. The arcade button things are nice and all but I wanted something subtler.

The rest was CTS pots and cloth wire.


The relocate to the upper bout for the toggle was drama. I bought a switchcraft JM switch, but the threading wasnt long enough for the thickness of the top goddamn it. This meant routing an access hole in the back of the body, that I wanted to avoid. In the end, I did that by bodge job (pics to follow) and reused the existing switch for now, as I did not want to further have to bodge in the new fancy switch and risk damaging the top of the guitar.



note I dont have the "proper" tools for this and made do with the bits I have in the man cave


To craft a cover I cut a peice out of an old black scratchplate, and hand finished to size with a dremel...
Annoyingly on the last bit of working with the hole cutting the finish chipped away. Im planning to live with it, at least for now.


Really happy with the results!



Must be said working on guitars shares many skills with pedals but to me at least its a helluva different game!
Cheers!

[mauman]

Congratulations!  Nice mods.  I have a Fender Toronado that came with the pickup switch in that upper bout, and I like that placement much better than down by the pickguard like a Tele.

[LaceSensor]

I dont mind the traditional tele position but putting it near the back of the guitar just doesnt work for me
I see people who turn around standard tele contol plates and cant get my head around it

[jessenator]

Nice work!

I'm almost ready to start the mods on my paranormal offset, but I keep waffling... did you notice if yours had wonky grounding/earthing? Either my house ground is poor, or my luck is bad! every fender/squire I've owned has had bad grounding—a redo on the bridge connection and copper tape in the routing helped a load.

And you're totally right: similar, yet different set of skills doing mods! Did my J bass not long ago, and it was a beast, but rewarding.

[jimilee]

Nice job. If you play it a lot, you'll have more scratches on the back. No worries there. Do you have any plans for the gold scratch plate


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[LaceSensor]

Nope I'm a fan of anodised guards