![]() 022 uF poly cap, and they are wired in the 50s wiring (tone pot parallel to output, not input), which is interesting. The pots are decent quality 500k no-name import, w/. So you might want to do this, but I'm saying this more as a hypothetical than anything that I actually experienced, because this pickguard didn't actually suffer from such static. This never happens with shielded pickguards. If your pick strikes the pickguard and your guitar is under some gain, you can sometimes hear crackle if you have an unshielded pickguard. There isn't a gigantic piece of foil like you see on Japanese Mustang pickguards, which, by the way, does make a difference. There's foil on the pickguard, but it's in two small pieces. There's shielding, but it's not obsessive. ![]() ![]() Quality of wiring is not bad, but not stellar either. ![]() I don't particularly think the split tone is all that useful by itself, but it makes the middle position more versatile because in stock form, it actually provides a very nice sounding hum-cancelling pair with the neck. The tone pot can be pulled out to split the pickup, which is nice to see in a stock guitar. I think once you get the string heights right, they provide a really good balance. The bridge pickup is in that nice low 8-8.5 Kohm range, and the neck pickup measures at 4-4.5, and has six AlNiCo flat magnets underneath a solid cover, which is a more vintage correct design than Fender Standard ceramic pickups. How about the sound? I think it's actually quite good. Luckily, both of these are very simple changes. Not only is this bad for tuning, but it broke a B string a couple hours after it was installed. I've seen some vintage Fenders like that, too, but how do you justify this? This means that the B and E strings are going in at an angle next to sharp bent metal. The string tree is of the vintage type, which isn't necessarily terrible, but they didn't put a spacer underneath it, so it's screwed all the way down to the wood. To be fair, we use wireless units which probably put a little bit extra weight on the output jack when playing seated and the strap isn't supporting it, but regardless, a Switchcraft jack has never failed during that kind of use. The output jack is of a cheap import type, and more importantly, it failed during a practice, so it really is a crap output jack. There are two parts that are crap on the stock guitar: string tree and output jack. Ultimately, to me, a guitar's quality is not about the things screwed into it, but more about its neck, overall vibe, and its potential. It just means that I have a deep parts bin that I was willing to hit up to get that guitar just right. This doesn't necessarily mean the stock guitar is bad. Now, it's probably clear from the pictures that the guitar has not stayed stock. It's never going to look washed out when you hit it with stage lights. There's real depth to the finish and when it catches stage lights just right, it does wonderful things. Still pictures do not adequately show how stunning this finish really is because it's not a flat pastel finish as you'd expect a surf green to be. But I've gotten to know it inside and out, and to experience it as a player, as a band guitar tech, and also as a bandmate hearing the guitar regularly, which means I think I can be relatively objective about it.
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