Algonquin said:
Coolio. :AOK: It's routed for H-S-H... is that how you'll load it up?
I plan to do a dual use set-up. I'm going to get a pickguard routed for two P-90's and the standard V/T/T plus a three way CRL (old Fender type) switch. Then I'm going to get another identical pickguard routed for two humbuckers and the same controls. The P-90 pickguard will have aged knobs and switch tip, that will hopefully match or blend with the cream colored P-90 covers. I haven't decided yet as to the knobs on the humbucker pickguard. The pickguards will be vintage white pearloid, which has that nice aged pearly/yellowed sort of look to them. I have a pair of humbuckers that have nickel silver covers on them right now, or the covers could be removed, leaving the exposed black coils. The other pair of humbuckers I have are cream colored on all four coils (tough luck DiMarzio...I got them before you sent your nasty-gram to Highorder :tongue: ). Since the humbuckers are two wire, I'm not going to do any coil tapping, I've got enough Strats for that. I want this set-up to be straight P-90, straight humbucker. Right now, I'm leaning toward the exposed black coil humbuckers as opposed to the cream ones. The Black ones are Rio Grande Genuine Texas/Texas BBQ's, and those should just scream in that ash/maple, body/neck combo. The Highorders are PAF clones, and as such, are probably better suited to my Agile LP clone.
In order to facilitate an easy change out, I'll need to use a 21 fret neck (maple/maple) with no fretboard over-hang to interfere with the pickguard removal. Then I'm going to use screw-in brass anchors in the body and machine screws to secure the pickguard(s) in place. This will make swap-outs possible without the danger of stripping out the wood where the pickguard screws normally attach right into the wood. For the input jack wiring, I plan to use a set screw quick coupler to attach the hot wire and the ground. From there, the other ends of the wiring will be permanently soldered to their respective hot (volume pot), and ground (pot shell or star ground). Since the control cavity will be shielded and grounded, I'll attach the tremolo ground wire directly to the grounded shielding via a wire eyelet. Because changing the strings will be required (most likely) to do the swap, this isn't going to be a middle-of-a-gig type change out system. It'll be more like an, I think I'd like to play humbuckers through this a while (or vice, versa).
As to the finish, I'm going to do a tobacco burst on the body, and a vintage amber on the neck. If all goes according to plan, the base color of the body burst (amber) will match the neck finish, which will also be amber. I really like the looks of the grain structure on this body. It's all fairly straight and flows in pretty much the same direction. It reminds me of the grain on my trans blue Deluxe Players Strat body...and that looks great. The only area on the body where the grain doesn't follow the same lines, is on the front, lower side. But that area will be almost completely covered by the pickguard any way, so it shouldn't matter.
Planning is such fun. And if the guitar gods smile upon me and everything works out according to plan, it'll pretty cool stuff...
oke: :beer: 
