Stage #1 of "Mexican turned custom" underway.

[dirtyjerzie85]

Just ordered my first stage of parts for my Mexican strat today. I ordered a Seymour Duncan dimebucker picup for the bridge and two Seymour Duncan hotrails for the middle and neck position. The black pickguard and three black dome knobs. Also Im gonna throw in a push/pull pot for a little coil tapping action. I'm putting a tiny kill switch right in between the volume/tone knobs and the five way selector switch. All those should be in and installed next week. I'm excited. I think I'm gonna have a hell :dance of a picup combonation on this MIM especially with the push/pull pot up in that beast. And I love the kill switch idea. I'm gonna have some before and after pics for yous soon. I'll post some throughout the whole mod because this is stage one of three. Total remodification done on this boy.

Now, stage two is gonna be a tremelo replacement with a Wilkinson/Gotoh VSVG vintage tremelo. And the Sperzel Trim-Lok guitar machines. However, I'm on the fence about the tremelo replacement. I want everything black so I might just replace what's there with a black one because I have the idea of putting them GraphTech Ghost Picup Saddles in there. Still up in the air. That's one reason I'm doing this mod in stages. So if any of yous has had or have used them pickup saddles before. Please share some info. Thanks

[markb]

Graphtec saddles will brighten the tone as well as making the tremolo a bit more stable. With your choice of pickups it's unlikely to get "icepick in the ear" bright though.

[dirtyjerzie85]

Well the saddles alone are pickups also. I'm jus curious to know how they sound. From what I have read about them they are supposed to make a solid body sound somewhat like an acoustic. I know for a fact it's very hard to match the sound of an acoustic using a solid body. I'm just kinda wanting as many pickup combos as I can get from one guitar. But ya know, I can always do my next project with them pickup saddles. Still please share some more info if you know and/or had some experience with them. Thanks fellow fretters.

[markb]

Oh, the piezo ones, they'll sound about as good as any other undersaddle pickup (i.e. not very imo).

First you'll need some kind of preamp in the guitar to get any decent output from them. Second, don't try to use the trem while outputting the acoustic sound, you'll get tons of noise from the strings scraping on the saddles. Personally if I want a strummy, roughly acoustic sound from a strat I just use position 4 (from the bridge) and knock the mids down on the amp.
My comments above were for "normal" Graphtec saddles.

[dirtyjerzie85]

These are graph tch saddles they have pickups inside them or something. Nothin under te bridge peice. I know I need a preamble to run then. My tech done a strat with the. Saddle and had room in the rear spring cavity to pu a battery to power the things. I'm not looking for info on how to install them or runn them. Just looking for some input on how they sound. Thanks again