[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, everybody.
It's Miami Mike Adams here today.
And I wanted to talk to you a little bit
about the Stratocaster.
Now there are a lot of things to be
excited about with the Stratocaster design.
But one of my favorite things is that it's meant to be modular.
You can swap parts and customize the guitar any way
you want with minimal effort.
And I think that's great.
Did you know that Fender offers pre-wired Stratocaster pick
guards featuring some of our most popular pickup sets,
including Custom Shop Fat '50s?
Well, here it is, friends.
Drink it up.
All of these are made in Fender factories using CTS pots
and Grigsby five-way switches.
The color options are black, tortoise shell, and parchment.
And because they come pre-wired, makes it easy
for you to do it yourself.
In this video, I'm going to show you
how to remove the pick guard currently on your guitar
and install this fancy new Fender pre-wired pick guard.
What do we need to do the job?
Well, first off we've got our pick guard all ready to go.
It's loaded with Tex-Mex single coils, pretty great pickups.
We'll also need a screwdriver to help get that pick guard off.
You can also use a drill with a screwdriver head attachment.
That saves you a lot of time.
We'll also need our soldering iron,
that's heating up and ready to go, a spool of solder,
essential.
And we've also got ourselves a fresh set of strings
for when we're all finished.
For this demo, I'll be using a Fender Player Strat.
Now I've already removed the strings,
flipped the guitar over, and removed the back plate
of the guitar so that we can gain access to this ground
point on the tremolo claw.
I'm going to pick up my soldering iron.
I'm going to remove that ground wire.
And it pops right off.
Now that we've taken care of the ground wire,
I'm going to flip the guitar back over
and remove all of the pick guard screws.
And while you're at it, don't forget the output jack cup.
We've got a couple of wires in here
that we're going to need to access.
Now that I've got the screws out,
first thing I'm going to do is de-solder the wires
coming from the output jack.
Come on, little guy.
I'm going to set that aside right there.
Now we're going to take the pick guard off, flip it
over, and gain access to the wires that I need to work with.
I'm going to pull the output jack wires through the body
because they're coming out with the pick guard.
And lastly, I'm going to be focusing on this little wire
right here that's screwed into the body.
That makes contact with the shielding pane on the guitar,
which keeps it much quieter.
We're going to be unscrewing that because there's
a new one on the new pick guard.
And I'm going to set that screw aside so that I don't lose it.
We've got pick guard off.
We're going to take this and set it aside.
We're going to pull out our new pick guard assembly.
Now, isn't that pretty?
We're going to take the new pick guard out
of the packaging, set it gently on our workbench.
We're also going to pull out the wiring schematic just in case
we need it.
Now this white wire, that's our hot output that
goes to the jack.
And either of these bare black wires,
that's going to go to the jack as well.
This one's going to be run to the tremolo claw
to replace the ground that we un-soldered first.
And this last guy, this is the one
that screws directly to the body to make contact
with the shielding pane.
First things first.
I'm going to take that ground wire that makes contact
with the shielding pane, I'm going
to put that back and gently put the screw back in.
And now it's ready to be screwed back into the body.
And now I'm going to feed all of the wires going
to the output jack and trem spring claw
back through the body.
I'm pulling the wires a little bit so they go back down,
and lay the guard on the body.
Now that we've got the wires fed through the body,
we're ready to solder the output jack back on.
Now remember, black goes to sleeve, white goes to tip.
Now what I like to do is thread the wire through its terminal
first and then solder it later.
And now the white wire.
Perfect.
And now we'll put the jack cup back onto the body
and screw it down.
Give that a few turns and make sure it's secure.
And we'll do the same for the pick guard.
Now that that's taken care of, it's
time to flip the body over to address the last solder joint.
Now to replace the ground wire for the tremolo claw.
Look at that solder melt. Perfect.
We're going to stuff that wire back
into the body a little bit.
And we should be ready to go.
So now we've got the pick guard installed,
all the solder joints are good.
You may think it's time to string up.
But hold your horses.
We should probably test this first before we go that far.
What we're going to do is we're going to plug into our amp.
We're going to tap the pickups with our screwdriver,
just to make sure we're getting signal,
and tap on the pull pieces of each pickup,
testing the positions as we go.
Perfect.
We may as well test the pots as well
to make sure that they're functioning properly.
Perfect.
Everything's working exactly as it should be.
Now that we've done the tap test,
we've got the guitar working all right,
I think it's time for strings.
This is also a great time to make any adjustments
to your action, your intonation, straightness of your neck,
any of that good stuff.
So have at it.
For more information on Fender's pre-wired pick guards
or even specs on how to set your guitar up,
visit Fender.com and stay tuned for more videos.