AlbertA
Shredder
- Messages
- 1,095
My Carvin Bolt had Bill Lawrence pickups (L200N, L200M, L280SL) which I had grown tired of, a Super-vee BladeRunner tremolo which was pretty stiff feeling, scratchy pots, a noisy pickup switch that I had to mess to much to get it to make good contact and a nut that was pinging. So I wanted to strip all that out.
How it started:
The first thing I replaced was the bridge. Vega-Trem bridges are the new hotness so I wanted to give them a try, I got a VT-1
And oh-yeah the feel is much much better than the BladeRunner - it looks a little odd with that routing though (Originally it came with a Wilkinson tremolo) but can't argue with the feel.
For the pickups I ended up with Fender Pure Vintage 65' pickup set as I liked a demo I heard online.
For the pots I got some CTS 10% 250K Ohm pots from Stewmac
I also opted to go with plastic number knobs instead of the metal gold dome knobs.
I got rid of the mini switch (used to bring the bridge pickup on regardless of pickup switch position) and opted for the traditional one volume, two tone setup.
At first I thought about saving the original switch, so I gave it a got deoxing
But the switch just was a goner - so I went with a Kaish 5-way switch I found on Amazon - way more solid feeling that whatever I previously had in there (from Carvin)
I had to do some drilling to make the pot holes bigger for the bigger shaft of the CTS pots.
I also had to countersink the screw holes for the pickup screws as the original ones where standard round heads and the new pickup set had oval heads.
For the nut, I measured the existing nut with a caliper and found the closest GraphTech replacement . It still needed a lot of patience, sanding a bit at a time (width, height, thickness) to get it to fit just perfectly.
Here's the result
I still want to do something about that bridge cavity routing - not sure what though.
And here's a demo of what the new pickups sound like:
How it started:
The first thing I replaced was the bridge. Vega-Trem bridges are the new hotness so I wanted to give them a try, I got a VT-1
And oh-yeah the feel is much much better than the BladeRunner - it looks a little odd with that routing though (Originally it came with a Wilkinson tremolo) but can't argue with the feel.
For the pickups I ended up with Fender Pure Vintage 65' pickup set as I liked a demo I heard online.
For the pots I got some CTS 10% 250K Ohm pots from Stewmac
I also opted to go with plastic number knobs instead of the metal gold dome knobs.
I got rid of the mini switch (used to bring the bridge pickup on regardless of pickup switch position) and opted for the traditional one volume, two tone setup.
At first I thought about saving the original switch, so I gave it a got deoxing
But the switch just was a goner - so I went with a Kaish 5-way switch I found on Amazon - way more solid feeling that whatever I previously had in there (from Carvin)
I had to do some drilling to make the pot holes bigger for the bigger shaft of the CTS pots.
I also had to countersink the screw holes for the pickup screws as the original ones where standard round heads and the new pickup set had oval heads.
For the nut, I measured the existing nut with a caliper and found the closest GraphTech replacement . It still needed a lot of patience, sanding a bit at a time (width, height, thickness) to get it to fit just perfectly.
Here's the result
I still want to do something about that bridge cavity routing - not sure what though.
And here's a demo of what the new pickups sound like:
