Some exciting stuff today. I got the pickup set that I’m going to use. Interestingly enough the bridge pickup doesn’t fit! That’s ok though, since I have one of those that fits perfectly and is same type. The other pickup is fine, though and that’s the one I really needed. I screwed them into the existing mounting holes in the body to do a check fit of the pickguard. The pickups are a very tight fit in the guard, and it needs to be enlarged for it to work right. There’s also another problem, with the pickups mounted and the guard sitting in the correct way over them, there is a gap at the neck pocket. That’s not going to fly for me! I have two options here. One is to come up with something to fill that gap. The other is to relocate the pickup so that the pickguard fits flush with the neck where it should.

I’m going with option 2, as it will look nicer, and because this pickguard comes from a U.S.A. built Fender, which means the pickup location this guard has built in is in the place Leo Fender intended. Now, will 1/8 of an inch really make a sound difference? Doubtful! But I’m a perfectionist, remember? After all, having a pickguard that fits like this is not going to work for me. Moving the pickup forward an eighth of an inch is pretty trivial. All I need to do is plug the old holes, line up the pickguard in the proper place, and then mark where new holes need to go. What do you plug the holes with? I found that some simple wooden toothpicks work quite well, coupled with a little wood glue they work perfectly for this task. All it took was 1 toothpick, too. I put a little glue in the hole, shoved the toothpick in, and broke it off to where the plug is flush with the cavity bottom. Nobody will ever see them, so I don’t need to worry about coloring them at all. The pickup cavities will be completely shielded with copper foil as well. The pickup is now mounted right where it needs to be, although I mauled the pickguard while trimming it. If I can’t clean it up nice enough I’ll just buy a new one eventually. At least all my measurements are now correct! However, since pickguards vary greatly from one to the next with the screw holes, I’ll wait until I decide for sure if I’m going to use this one before I drill the holes. In the meantime I can just tape it to the body for anything I need.

The next task is to figure out how the bridge mounting is going to go. I now have the pickups. What I did for this was to put the pickups in place, and then tape an old string up by the nut on the neck, so that I can see where the string will go in relation to the pickup pole pieces while holding the string over the bridge saddle. This is one thing that can make a guitar or bass look cheap and sloppy is if the strings do not go close to center between the two pole pieces on the pickups. Whether it makes a sound difference or not is debated, but I want it to look nice! I also taped the bridge in place of where I think it should be mounted, and then made sure the strings go between the poles. It looks like they are going to go almost dead center on each string, as can be seen in the above picture. Very nice! I just have to measure now and make sure the bridge is forward or back far enough so that the scale length (34” from the nut to bridge) is correct, but it shouldn’t be far off. I am having second thoughts on using this neck, though. I don’t like it all that much and I’ve managed to acquire a couple other necks which I had been previously unable to find, which were my first choice originally for the one I wanted to use.. They should be here this week, and hopefully at least one of them fits without much work. Then I’ll be in really good shape! For now I need to double check some measurements, and also try and fix the deformed pickguard. I need to improve my skill with the dremel tool before trying that again!