This baby needs some love (pic heavy)

yevveh

So about 8 years ago, a friend of mine gave me a semi-functional Squier Strat (Affinity series). Shortly afterwards it went from semi-functional to useful only for firewood, and probably wouldn't even have done a good job at that either. Now, one of my friends who's made some sweet axes from scratch has offered to replace the electrics, pickups, and whatever else for a little over cost price. Standard wise, I'm looking for the Biffy Clyro sound, and he uses Fender Mex's. That's all I know. I'm mainly a bassist (playing 8 and a bit years) and I've been playing acoustic for 3 or 4 years, but I know SFA about guitars, different types of pickups/bridges/necks, etc.

Some pics:



That's her.



As you can see, there are no wires. My friend superglued the lead in because it wouldn't stay in, and when the guitar inevitably stopped working, I unscrewed the lead cover thing and broke a wire.



Bridge. I know not if it's any good.



I'm planning on replacing these pickups. My friend suggested these ones, I believe - http://store.guitarfetish.com/newhpi.html





Machineheads look ok. You can see some dents at the very tip of the head.



There are some dents in the neck. I don't know if they're worth replacing the neck for, but then again I don't know about the quality of the neck overall either.







Apart from a few dents on the back, the neck looks fine. There doesn't seem to be any wear on the frets.




Basically, I'm looking for any advice whatsoever. At the moment, my friend recommended just to change the pickups and fix the electrics. This is a fairly budget job (if it wasn't, I'd go and buy a 2nd hand US / Japanese Strat), but if serious improvements could be done with relatively little extra, I'd definitely consider them. Should I change the neck / machineheads / bridge or anything? This will be my first electric guitar, so I don't have any ridiculous expectations, I'd just like a good quality for a reasonable amount of money. I feel a little silly asking for advice on a budget job with a low-end guitar, but then I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to hardware and would like to know a little about things when I meet up with my friend to give him the guitar.

Thanks

Doctor J

Apart from the missing jack, there's not too much askew. Soldering and installing the new socket is 10 minutes of work and a €10 of materials. The nut could do with some work, the strings look very high over the first fret. Other than that, there's not too much wrong really. Yes, you can get better parts like tuners and the like, but they may not be actually necessary. If the neck dents bother you, just sand it down a little, again about 20 minutes of work there. Personally, I'd get it working before I invested money in pickups, you may decide you don't need them.

Feelgood

Is the neck straight?. If so why change it??.

By the looks of things all you need is to sort out the input jack...

My advice would be just sort out the jack input, play around with it
for a while and if you think in 6 months to a year that your going to commit
yourself to playing a guitar then upgrade or change it then? No point in throwing money at it if its only gonna be sitting in the wardrobe in 6 months!.

If the neck is straight then its dead on to be honest, don't be fooled by names. I know a couple of guys who swear by the necks on a Squier strat.

Whats your budget for pickups?. Again I wouldn't change them until you get the swing of playing an axe first, but its upto you at the end of the day.

punk_one82

Just a word on "the Biffy sound". Simon Neil has thousands of pounds worth of gear, mexican, japanese and american made guitars and some customs I think. My advice would just be to put in decent pups and get all the electrics sorted. You'll have a decent first electric then.

yevveh

The reason I'm planning to put effort into it at the start is because I've spent the last maybe 3 or 4 months writing tunes almost solely on guitar, and I'm awful at doing this work myself, so if there was anything I needed to get done I'm gonna try and get it done in one go. The dude is from Waterford so I don't know how often he'll be in Dublin either.

The neck is dead straight. Apart from the dents there doesn't seem to be any problem with it (except from a serious dust buildup from being under my bed for about 7 and a half years), and I can live with them.

I was hoping to get a nice sounding axe for less than €100. I've been spending so much time on acoustic lately that I wouldn't mind putting more in as a more long-term investment if it'll make a fair bit of difference. I could ask him if he'd do the electrics first and then switch out the pickups, they could be alright..

Cheers J, I'll ask him to take a look at the nut.

punk_one, I was going on this list which seems to be from 2005 - http://www.biffytabs.biffierthanthou.com/e_si.htm. I'm going on the sound off the first 3 albums.

Dord

Doctor J wrote: »

Apart from the missing jack, there's not too much askew. Soldering and installing the new socket is 10 minutes of work and a €10 of materials. The nut could do with some work, the strings look very high over the first fret. Other than that, there's not too much wrong really. Yes, you can get better parts like tuners and the like, but they may not be actually necessary. If the neck dents bother you, just sand it down a little, again about 20 minutes of work there. Personally, I'd get it working before I invested money in pickups, you may decide you don't need them.

I agree, the main thing it needs is a new jack, and a new set of strings.
Other than that I'd say a good thorough clean, including the hardware. This means taking stuff off like the bridge and cleaning it. Along with this the frets look like they could use a polish. I've used T-cut before for this with good results and the best thing is that it doesn't remove a load of material or have any mess like steel wool.

yevveh

Oh the strings go without saying :P I'll get a pair of Elixirs, I know some people don't like them but I use them for my acoustic and my bass and I love 'em.

Will clean 'er up nice and good, but what's T-cut and where would I get it?

Dord

yevveh wrote: »

Oh the strings go without saying :P I'll get a pair of Elixirs, I know some people don't like them but I use them for my acoustic and my bass and I love 'em.

Will clean 'er up nice and good, but what's T-cut and where would I get it?

It's scratch remover for paint. You could get it in Halfords or most auto parts stores usually.

Oh btw, I think the guitar would look awesome if you put a black pickguard, pickup covers and knobs on it. :cool:

yevveh

Dord wrote: »

It's scratch remover for paint. You could get it in Halfords or most auto parts stores usually.

Oh btw, I think the guitar would look awesome if you put a black pickguard, pickup covers and knobs on it. :cool:

Great man, cheers!

If I made everything black I'd have to call it 'none more black', wouldn't I? :pac: I might take off the scratch and paint it some ridiculous colours - nothing like J's P bass scratchplate in the Julio thread, but something to brighten it up anyway

Dord

yevveh wrote: »

Great man, cheers!

If I made everything black I'd have to call it 'none more black', wouldn't I? :pac: I might take off the scratch and paint it some ridiculous colours - nothing like J's P bass scratchplate in the Julio thread, but something to brighten it up anyway

Nah, I think it'd look good.

yevveh

That looks cool but the sunburst is a lot lighter there than on mine, wouldn't be the same