Fender Upgrade

Kalcium

Hi there, I have recently fallen in love with my Fender Squier Bulletstrat guitar which i payed R600 for secondhand when i was first starting...
The thing is it has issues, such as the pickup selector being faulty and the jack input not holding the cable properly...all which can be fixed by sending it in, BUT!

Im looking to upgrade, ideally I'd like a proper american strat but as a student I dont wanna fork out 10k for a guitar... so I was wondering what fellow forumers thought would be the best mods to make on it, ie changing pickups (don't know any other examples...) and whether its worth it to spend money on putting nice parts into a guitar thats maybe not the best quality if you know what I mean? (like no point having a marshall amp linked to a mic'd up baked beans tin that you hit?)

Also as I found with my Cort M520 when I wanted to upgrade pickups I found I could get a good condition secondhand Cort VX-2V with EMGs (for the metal side of me) for virtually the same price as what I was willing to pay for new pickups...

The thing is, with a Les Paul, you can get an epiphone for a decent price and by-pass getting a gibson (waaaaaaaaaaaay out of price range ???)
But a R1500 Squier doesn't really have the same sort of quality vs a Strat as a Epiphone has vs a Gibson...or am I wrong?

ALSO! Are there better quality squiers? I've seen secondhand squiers for up to R3000 on gumtree while you can buy brand new ones for about R1500...(was on special at R1200 when i first got mine, though i got a secondhand one for R600 as mentioned above)

Thanks in advance ?

AlanRatcliffe

IMO, you're better off upgrading to a Mexican Fender Strat than trying to hotrod a Bullet. The Mex guitars are pretty good already and are easily upgraded further. Slap in a set of Tonerider pickups and have it set up properly and you have a very cost effective but good guitar.

There are better quality Squiers, the Bullet and the Affinity series are nowhere near as nice as the Standard, Classic Vibe or Vintage Modified ranges.

makepeace

if you want to go the upgrade route:

tuners (they often use very cheap ones that cause tuning problems)
nut (the plastic ones suck tonally)
saddles (standard ones are poorly machined and contribute to tuning problems)
trem block (the squier's standard blocks are generally weight reduced and made out of substandard materials, you want to go for the solid steel or brass ones)
electronics (tone caps, pots, jacks, switches)
pickups (duh, toneriders are well priced and recommended)

you can get these things from:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/ (cheap wholesale stuff, probably not a whole lot better than whats on your guitar)
http://www.stewmac.com/ (diverse range, a little more expensive)
http://www.acmeguitarworks.com/ (good quality stuff, pretty expensive)
http://www.lmii.com/Default.asp (varies, the shipping is quite expensive)
http://www.tonerider.co.za/

singemonkey

+1 on the Mexican (or Japanese if you can get it) Strat upgrade. You won't really get your money back on all those upgrades, I think. Rather save up a little and get a decent Strat. Basically any Strat with Fender on the headstock is good. The pickups tend to be better in the American ones (although quite a few Japanese models come with American pickups) but, as Alan said, toneriders for a cheap but excellent upgrade.

As for the Squier vs. Fender against Epiphone vs. Gibson, it totally depends on which Squiers and which Gibsons you're talking about. Made-in-Japan Squiers have a great reputation, as do classic-vibe squiers. On the other hand I saw the latest batch of Epiphone Les Pauls in the store and they looked really poorly thrown together.

Vick

Yea man,get a mex standard,every now and then one pops up for about +-4500...

BUT I must say that the vintage vibe ones are also good, but I think a second hand mex would cost the same\be cheaper and its a better bet,especially if your planing on mod'ing it in the future...

Good luck man ?

Kalcium

Thanks a lot guys, I'm definitely gonna look into getting me a Mexican Strat, R4500 sounds very reasonable!

Also thanks for the tip on toneriders! Their prices are sooooo good! ? Im quite excited ?

1 more question now that i know about toneriders, I have a Cort M520 which has the split coil option when i pull the tone knob up, do you have to buy special pickups for that or can you buy regular humbuckers and wire them to work with the split coil option? Or can you buy regular humbuckers and just put them in and not use the split coil option? (If I have a mexican strat i wont reeeally need the single coil sound from the Cort so I could just use the humbuckers as is kind of thing...)

Vick

As long as the humbucker has 4conductor cords,all is good ?

Kalcium

I dont really know anything about the electronics at all...so what exactly does 4 conductor cords mean ? haha

Valie

What it means is that the pickup has 4 wires coming out of it. There are two coils to the pickup, the start and the end wires of each coil = 4 wires.

AlanRatcliffe

Kalcium wrote: I dont really know anything about the electronics at all...so what exactly does 4 conductor cords mean ? haha

Four "hot" wires coming from the pickup coils. Lets you wire the coils in any combination. All the Tonerider humbuckers have four wires.

Kalcium

So if I got a set of toneriders for my Cort I'd be able to wire them with the split coil option as well? (I know with EMGs you have to buy ones that are made to do it, i think its the 89?) But with Toneriders its possible with any of their pickups?

chris77

Yup. Andre from Tonerider is a forum member. Send him a pm, or for a super quick response, send an e-mail on their site. He is a great person to do business with and will give you all the advice, tips and answers to your questions that you might need. He's also a moer of a good player, so its nice that its a fellow muso giving the advice rather than a random sales person.