We may very well get flamed for this, but here it is: we just drilled some holes into a 1987 Tom Anderson guitar. The owner of this instrument has had it for over 20 years, and had always wanted to make some changes, so he brought it to us to put it under the knife. This guitar was originally equipped with two single coils, one humbucker, and three individual toggles to turn the pickups on and off. Although a pretty versatile control setup, it makes quick tone switching rather difficult. We were asked to install a pickguard and convert the guitar to a standard 5-way switch control scheme.
Cutting into the body was simple enough: we needed to make enough room for the 5-way switch to fit. We started with the original routes, like so:
And cut out a section for the 5-way, like so:
Now we just had to wire up the controls and mount them to a pickguard. Sounds easy enough, but this isn’t a standard Strat, and no after-market pickguard would fit – so we had to make one. Making a pickguard isn’t as easy as it seems: there’s tons of layout work, and it requires the utmost in patience and attention to detail. Even if a line is ever so slightly out of whack, you’d be able to see it.
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And here’s the completed guitar. We think it looks great – just don’t tell Tom.
