TheMODSQUAD
With the chassis smoothly sanded, the fingerboard and frets looking good, DAVE BURRLUCK Dave Burrluck considers the sonic options for his offset kit-build
Iwas going to give this piece the provocative title ‘The Great Pickup Swindle!’, as choice is exactly what we don’t get on so many instruments. Our StewMac offset kit, which we started to put together in the last issue of The Mod Squad, is similarly one-choice with its pair of P-90 soapbars, their position fixed by the open holes in the scratchplate. If you want to fit Jazzmaster or Jaguar-style offset staples, for example, or simply a humbucker at the bridge, you would need to get a new scratchplate made.
But I don’t actually feel swindled, just strangely limited, particularly since this offset kit’s body has a rectangular ‘swimming pool’ rout. This means that, in theory, we could fit numerous styles of pickups, just as long as they are able to be direct-mounted to the body. Of course, we’d then need some kind of adapted scratchplate to hold the volume, tone and output jack on the treble side, and another to hold the toggle switch on the bass-side shoulder.
While I ponder my options, I uncover a more fundamental problem: a Jazzmaster pickup inside its cover is too wide to fit in that rout. It seems like an epic fail by StewMac, as widening that rout by under 2mm would mean you could fit in the wider pickup and then perhaps mix it up with a Tele-style single coil at the neck, or a Gold Foil. If you have a sharp flat chisel and know how to use it – which I do – it’s easy enough to pare away a little wood on the treble side of the cavity, meaning a Jazzmaster pickup now fits and the poles sit under the strings. So at least that’s done if I decide to follow that path. But while these potential ideas percolate, I decide to get on with the job: load in the supplied pickups and get this offset electrified!
Powering Up
Like Fender’s original offsets, and unlike the beautifully considered ‘modular’ Stratocaster, the idea with StewMac’s offset is that the two pickups screw directly to the body, while the controls and output jack are pre-fitted (and wired up) onto the scratchplate [pic 1]. It means positioning those soapbars has to be accurate. I load everything onto the guitar after slackening the strings, then retighten, which proves to be the perfect way to line everything up. Using a long thin bradawl I mark the two screw holes that are used to mount the soapbars and drill two 2mm diameter holes approximately 12mm deep [pic 2]. A soapbar needs some kind of ‘cushion’ between the pickup and the body to allow for a firm mount that is height-adjustable. Although springs are provided, I simply cut some of the kit’s packing foam [pic 3], which is quite dense but not too hard, and use that.
