Hi all! I have been out of guitar playing, much at least, for a while while we have dealt with some family stuff. But now, I have the hankering to get started again, and to tinker with something. So, I feel a new project coming on. a few years ago, you may remember I modded my CVC tele. It came out great, and it is currently the guitar I play the most.

You may or may not also recall that a long time ago, I bought a Dimarzio Virtual Hot PAF for the bridge from Tone2theBone, and never used it. It never sold either. I have long had a hankering to do something with it. So here is my plan, only roughly sketched out so far:

Get a Squier Deluxe Hot Rails strat, in Olympic White, or possibly try to find an Olympic White Classic Vibe 60's strat as a base for the project. The advantage of the Deluxe Hot Rails is that it has 500k pots already, due to the hot rails. And they can be had cheap used. The advantage of the Classic Vibe, if I can find one in the color I want, is that I know how good my tele is. And it has the smaller headstock that I prefer. But it will cost more, and need it's pots replaced.

THEN, either get a Dimarzio Humbucker from Hell (which despite its name is a relatively low output neck humbucker that Rivers Cuomo used), or have Bryan Gunsher who wound my tele pickups, to wind me something for the neck. I am basically looking for a Rivers Cuomo superstrat HH configuration. I will take out the middle pup. I will need to learn about wiring patterns and diagrams and figure out a cool way to wire it. Likely, I will want something like Bridge, bridge split paired with neck split, both pickups together in full, neck, not sure what else. Will do some study to see what is possible. The middle positions may be reversed, I don't know. But I think that is possible.

I have checked it out and the standard squiers, Classic vibes, and deluxes all seem to be routed HSH so that should help.
I will also need to study up on soldering and see if my little home iron is good enough for the job.

Do you lot have any thoughts on this plan, or opinions on the couple squiers I am looking at?

Cheers!

Steve