A buddy of mine found out I was playing guitar and droped off a little gift for me. Very cool of him.
Has anyone every played with this set up.
I am pretty sure I am going to put it into my strat. Right now I have some Johnson emg’s that came with this body.
I decided to swap them out and do some fret work.
Went to put the new one in and I suddenly realized my solder iron is in our storage room. 
Denied!!
Edit: Wierd zodiac killer symbols inside. I will add to them.
Looks good. Way beyond my skill level.
About those signs… How old is your guitar exactly? And how did you get it? 
I have put the same pickups in 2 strats I’ve owned, I loved the sound which gives a really versatile tone good for clean jangle sound (U2) and distorts well when used for that too
On my 2nd strat those pickups were first on my shopping list
Soldering is not too hard really, just needs some ‘buy once’ stuff and a little practice. The im going for it attitude helps too. Since all my stuff is cheap, If I mess it up im not too worried. If I could fix the damage on my acoustic and feel as comfortable with that ttpe of repair as I do this, It would be great.
Very cool. I was hoping I would hear something like this. Thansk for commenting. All the components look better and the wiring is much cleaner so that already a bonus.
What a cool gift my buddy gave me, I am very thankful.
So with BLIM starting, I finally am getting on this pickguard swap. Dont you know it there is wierd stuff.
Who ever put these screws in had the breakfast of champions, booze and pills because they are not lined up correctly.
Opetions that I see are.
I will start the shielding it and carry on with the job at hand. Maybe someone would have an Idea. I am sure there is a tool test the tension spread but I dont have one. When I got this I was not using it much, and I was not very good on electric. So I am not qulified to say if there is an issue. Maybe I will leave it and just see how its going. 
I finished the shield in the pickguard and have it reassembled. I had to step away. I did take some photos of the process. I learned a few things from last time. Doing it inside where there is light us one of them. LOL
I add a Nirvana gliph and my mark to the rest of them.
Last time i did not pre measure my pickups and it took a while to dial them in. I pre measure my pick ups this time. This way, at least I have an Idea of where to start out. Its better than arbitrary numbers off a website.
Aaaand done.
back and front looks good
Cheak continuity… green light and 0 resistance, with audible beep = full continuity. Nice! I am good to go. 
Everything is back togeather.
Make sure all the pickups are at the same height as when I started. I made a couple of small adjustments and g2g
On to the body.
I finished up the loaded pickguard swap.
I did a few things while doing this project.
Added the Texas Special picks that were designed by Stevie Ray Vaughn, it was the whole pick guard and pickup set so it included the electronics as well which is very nice.
I shielded the inside of the guitar body, so there will be no more noise. I had a problem with this guitar before with a lot of noise I found out why after I opened it up
Lastly I crowned and polished some of the frets that looked icky.
This guitar had no shielding at all before. Lots of dust metal chunks even a dead fly, gross.
After I finshed shielding the pickguard I hit the body. I did it like my other project. I started on the floor and worked my way from the edges toward the center. I tried to get the longest lengths I could. Then I did the walls over lapping the floor and then the floor over lapping about 3 to 4 mm over the top. The overlap on top will be the source of connection with the bottom foil on the pickguard creating the “fairday cage”
Like before I used a short section of B string soldered into place, to connect the output cavities to the main body then I covered the exposed wire with more shielding tape.
Issues.
I had a couple of hangups.
This pick guard is longer in the neck portion that the old. I had to make a fair amount of modifications to the pick guard to get the neck on correctly.
After the first time I felt I had it on well. I put the strings on tuned it up and tried to play and it was buzzing so bad after the 6th string it was clear something was really off. I realized in fact the pick guard was not cut down well enough.
So back off the neck came and more material was removed. We still have most of our stuff in storage including my tools in so I did the best with what I had. When I got enough material for the proper fit I put it back togeather and screwed it on and… Is it really after 1 am? No way, so off it came and finally success.
Did I really just do that?
I ended up stay up and messing around with it. It needs a good set up and the intonation is way off. Good thing the guy who does it is right here in my room. And I can do it myself.
It was 3 am i burns some toast the smoke alarm went off my 140 pound greman Shepard got scared and lose on the 2 acres its 32 degrees F or 0 C for you other folks. Its time for a couple of short recordings.
Who me? 
I had some reverb and some chorus, not enough distortion unfortunatly. It does not sound too good. But it will sound great with some crunch which I added this morning and better intonation. I will give it a nice set up tonight after I get some solid practice time in today.
I have read a lot of really good things about these Texas Special loaded pick guards, i cant wait to use it. Thanks for taking the time to read my build. If any questions or comments please post them up. If you see anything I did that you feel I missed or that I could do better, please give me the suggestion, after all this is a learning community and I am learning new things with each and every project.
Sorry i missed this post Jason you know I like building guitars mate cheers Hec
It’s been so busy, its the post holiday rush. Crazy for everyone. Its been a rough week too.
You dont see anything wierd, do you? One reason I post the builds is hoping someone might catch a mistake, I know a make enough of them.
Thank you Delta 
now all I need to give it a set up. Its supposed to sound amazing out of the box right? Oh there is no box. Hahaha
I checked the intonation, either my batteries were going out or it is way off. It needs a set up again.
Not today, dem blues be calling from the Delta
“I wish I was a catfish”
🩵
I did the exact same thing with a Squire hardtail Strat I bought off a buddy for 100 bucks. The only things I did differently were adding a new nut and jack. I had the same issues with the pickguard size. I love it and how it sounds. Grats on your SRV Partscaster!
Well I was practicing blues for BLIM this evening, yup poped a string.
So I took this oppurtunity to put this one down and finish setting up the guitar from this project. So I figured I may as well document it if a can actually rememeber to take some photos.
I usually have a little relief in my neck. So no suprise. But First things last I will flatten it out.
Try and use something that is long that can get in there nice and firm and not interfere with your strings. Succes, 2 bairly 1/8 turns maybe a little more got me perfect. Always wait a few moments to let it settle before going again.
ok these are the basic tool you will need for a basic set up.
Mesure outside strings the E amd the e, at the 12th fret. Adjust each string with the 2 adjustments keep it level.
Once the outside strings are where you want them you want. The next step is to adjust all the strings to the correct heights and curvature. To do this you want to find the neck curvature and match the strings. So thats what these neck radius Guages are for.
Slide one at a time under strings and lay flush to the neck. It should lay flush the whole way accross. You dont want any rocking, nor do you want to have gaps underneath.
Most strats i think are 9.5 or 10. Maybe 9s. Mine is above a 9.5 but under a 10 so I rounded up to 10. You are going to transfer this gague radius to the strings them selves. Super easy right.
This is the equipment I have and the tools. I would love to buy a $200 anything. But I got my years worth of presants at Christmas.
Ok intonation.
Tune guitar open
Then cheak the tuning at the 12th fret.
If in tune open but
the string is Sharp at the 12 then back the saddle away from the nut. Small increments at a time. Retune, repeat maneuver until in tune. Take it slow.
If note is flat at the 12th now you want to move the bridge toward the nut. Retune and cheak again.
This will give you nice full tones at the middle of your neck more of the notes with be in proper pitch through out the neck. I dont know if this will help anyone but maybe it will inspire someone to take thay 120 bucks for a set up and buy a fe wtool and learn to do it yourself. Then the saved money buys more gear.
Thank you. I only had to re-drill 2 holes. So that was much better than my HSH build. Yeah i am just finishing this and already loking for another project. Haha
I just finished the set up also.
Thansk for commenting.
I did not see any handling of the broken string. I have seen people say it is inevitable when bending but I have not seen that in my playing. I went through BLIM with 95% one guitar and one set of strings (which really do need a change at this point). No breaks. I think this is due to my diligence of watching for sharp edges.
Looks like yours may have broken at the tuning peg. Is the edge of the peg sharp where the string gets bent hard when the peg turns? My higher quality pegs look far better than the lower quality ones.
It broke at the 7th fret. I will swap those strings out today in that guitar.
Be sure to give the frets a good polish and look for a sharp edge. I use the micro-mesh kit in this Amazon US link. Kind of expensive, but I have had it for over three years and now only needs replacing after doing some heavier work on my SSS build.
Micro-Mesh is great and it is very long lasting. I’ve not had to yet, but as I understand it you can get even more life out of them by washing with a bit of soapy water.
That seems likely. The sheets are very flexible and should dry nicely.
I have a vew sheets that I have knowingly abused on the edges and those edges are falling apart. I can wait for someone to replace them from my wish list. Family is always asking for something to get for gifts. 
Those are a good price. They last a fair amount of time. I have most of those grits covered already from my other endeavors. The freats may need some attention. There is some flattening. Its going to need some work. I will take a look.
For now I am really enjoying the sound of this texas special. The Tone is incredible.
