Getting an old companion restored

My recent attempts at resurrecting a knackered old second-hand guitar pretty much failed after I realised I couldn’t fit the bridge and keep the thing in tune. It’s a shame to throw a musical instrument onto the woodpile (not literally in this case…yet) so I turned my attention to another half-broken thing I had lying around.

This is a 1989 Korean-made Squier Bullet that has much more sentimental value: I bought it second-hand at the age of sixteen with money from a part-time job. It’s the good old First Guitar that you can never bear to part with, no matter what happens to it. Despite various things going wrong on it I kept the thing regardless with the hope of making it playable again some day. And y’know what, I finally did.

It’s not actually all that bad as a player. The neck is one of those narrow profile Fender-style efforts with slightly narrower string spacing that’s comfortable enough and the frets aren’t too worn. It has a three pickup circuit of a standard Strat, except with only one tone and volume control (the hole where the other tone knob would go is instead where the jack socket is fitted). It’s a slightly stripped-down, more basic take on the classic Strat shape which I’m guessing was intended for the beginner/student market.

The bridge has the Strat vibrato arrangement too, except it’s held in place with two pivot screws rather than the usual row of six; again it’s a cheaper/simpler arrangement but I’ve always liked it because it’s more straightforward to set up. It doesn’t look as robust though, so I fitted it with 0.09 gauge strings instead of my usual 0.10s.

Interestingly the body has a set of three single-coil sized routs, rather than the larger ‘bathtub’ routs of modern Strats so there’s no room for fitting double coil pickups (the smaller routs are supposed to give a better tone…but like I’d notice the difference). The body is slightly smaller than the standard Strat body shape but it’s well balanced and feels fine. Apart from new machine heads the only major work that wanted doing was with the circuitry.

I slapped on copper insulating tape over the entire underside of the pickguard and soldered on a new earth wire to make sure there wouldn’t be any hum or background noise. The five-way pickup switch and both the volume and tone pots were on their last legs so I replaced them: the volume is a 250k linear, the tone a 250k log (with an orange drop cap) and the switch is the standard five-way. Considering this was my first attempt at soldering I was pleasantly surprised that the tone control is the only thing that isn’t working; I’ll check for dry joints the next time I restring it.

The only thing left to do now is sort out the pickups. The stock ones were, unsurprisingly, not all that great and the wiring was virtually useless anyway. I nicked the pickups from my Affinity failure which aren’t much of an improvement but at least I was able to wire them in. They’re pretty weak-sounding so I have my eye on some Lace Sensors which I’ll order and try out in the next few months. Next up: I really need a new amp.