Hey everyone,
I just recently ordered some new parts for my Jackson JS32M guitar from Stewmac, reason being is that I want to get the guitar back into a playable state after doing some work on the electronics to install some Gibson pickups I salvaged from my old Gibson LP Studio guitar that I decided to get rid-of after I got sick and tired of constantly fighting to keep it in tune.
The two pickups I salvaged are Gibson's factory-made 480 and 490T PAF humbuckers with silver shields from what I understand, so they should be really good quality pickups, actually I think the pickups were the only good quality parts from my old LP Studio guitar that I liked, hence why I salvaged them.
I ordered the following parts from Stewmac:
* X1 Chrome Floyd Rose Special Bridge Baseplate, With Saddle Screws.
* X1 Set of 6 Chrome Floyd Rose Special String Saddles.
* X1 Chrome Floyd Rose Special Trem Arm And Socket.
* X1 Set Of 6 Chrome 6-In-Line Grover Mid-Sized Rotomatic Tuners (305 Series).
* X1 Set Of Two Chrome Floyd Rose Bridge Mounting Studs And Inserts.
* X1 Chrome R3 Special/1000 Series Locking Nut.
* X1 Set Of 3 Black Floyd Rose Noiseless Trem Springs.
* X2 Sets Of Floyd Rose Locking Nut Shims.
* X1 Set Of 6 Black Floyd Rose String-Lock Insert Blocks.
With These new parts and some good spare parts I have in a plastic bag, I will have enough parts to build a complete chrome Floyd Rose Special bridge, which I will use in my Jackson JS32M guitar, sure, I could have bought a Floyd Rose Original trem instead, but Stewmac seem to be out of them for the time-being.
All the electrical re-wiring work I did on the guitar seems to have gone-off without a hitch and everything seems to be working as it should, I've opted to keep it simple and gone with a standard master volume and tone control setup, I replaced the two stock 500k Log pots with two of the 500K Log pots that came out of my old LP Studio guitar as they were of better quality than the stock ones, the original tone cap was a 22nF and I decided to replace it with a 47nF tone cap, I think to my ears, 47nF works better with humbuckers than 22nF.
Although both of the Gibson pickups do have a coil-tap connection, I opted to configure them as standard humbuckers since I rarely used the coil-tapping when they were in my old LP Studio guitar, I may add that feature later-on though, we'll see.
I've got two spare sets of Darco electric guitar strings in my standard 42-09 gauge, next fortnight I'm going to order a D Addario 25-Set box of 42-09 gauge strings from Stewmac so I'll have plenty of spare sets of strings on hand.
So far this has been a fun restoration project, and I'm looking forward to playing my Jackson JS32M guitar again.
Here's a pic of the guitar with the Gibson pickups installed in it:
Once this guitar is all up and running in a playable-state, my next restoration-project for this year is going to be my BC Rich Warlock guitar, I'm planning-on ordering a new custom neck for it from BC Rich USA, they let me know via an email that they can make a new one for me, I'm also planning on replacing all the stock BC Rich pickups and wiring with a new set of Kerry King EMG 81 and 85 active pickups, which should be interesting since I've never tried active EMG pickups before, my BC Rich Warlock guitar is a "Metal" style guitar after-all and I think it deserves it, should be fun getting it to a playable state again.
Here's a pic of the BC Rich Warlock guitar: