G'day from Albury - EX1-R Build

[nathan]

Hi all,

Just received my EX1-R with black hardware and pretty pumped to get in to it. I opted for the Grover tuners and bone nut upgrades, and the body and neck look like they're in great condition. This is my first DIY guitar build and I have a pretty modest workshop, so waiting on a few basic supplies to arrive before I can really get in to it. I'll be starting a build diary to keep track of everything and plan to do a test fit this weekend. Fingers crossed it all looks good.

I had a couple of questions, which I'm sure will be the first of many.
1. I plan to initially fit the stock PUPs while I'm learning the build process, but will no doubt want to replace them with a quality set if I'm going to use it day to day. Will most pickups fit in the existing body recess? Or am I likely going to need to resize? I'd obviously prefer to do any body work before I paint. Also, do different pickups require different wiring or parts (pots, earth etc)
2. I'm planning to finish this with a gloss paint. I've been watching YouTube videos (there a great one from StewMac) and it's a pretty major task. I'm not bothered by the work, but it could be expensive. I was considering hitting up a local automotive painter and seeing if they could give it a crack. Anyone have any experience with this?

I've got a whole lot of resources so feel ready to dive in. Would love any other advice, particularly if anyone has experience with this model guitar or any other stock parts I should replace.

Nathan

[Trevor Davies]

Hello and welcome nathan.

I have not built this kit. But, I put some Tonerider Birmingham humbuckers into my DSCM-1 build last year. I think I had to cut back the corners of the screw mounting section a touch, to make them more circular, so as to get them to fit into the humbucker routes. But no major work was needed. I think the EX-1R should be similar.

Some pups do have different wiring, but generally would still work with the Pitbull parts. If you stick with humbuckers the pots would not need to change - I think humbuckers are usually put with 500k pots, while single coils are generally with 250k pots.

I'm not sure about your paint query.

Good luck with your build.

[Simon Barden]

Hi and welcome

The kit humbuckers are the standard size, so any replacement humbucker (Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Tonerider etc.) should just drop in. There's a caveat in that the height-adjustment screw mounting lug sticking out of the ends of the pickup are often smaller than those on replacements, and the notches in the pickup rout for them of the kits tends to match that, so on some kits (it's variable between kits) the ends of the metal tabs dig into the rout a bit and stop the pickup moving freely.

if this happens, the options are to either file off some of the metal tab on the new pickups or else make the cutouts a bit bigger. A small diameter drum sander attachment on a Dremel is useful for this.

Saying that, I had no problems with my EX-1 kit and some Iron Gear replacement pickups, but it all depends on the template the factory used to rout the cavities with. If the pickups are a bit tight, then it's not a major problem to fix.


The kit pickups often come with a single conductor + screen output lead, whilst most replacement humbuckers will come with a four conductor + screen output cable (unless they are a period-correct PAF style pickup). Some of the kits come with 4-conductor + screen pickups but it's not that consistent as to what you get.

But unless you want to add some single coil or parallel coil switching options, the connections are very similar. You might need to solder two wires together and tape them up (to duplicate the coil linking done within the pickup on the single wire version) and twist the screen and pickup signal ground wire together before soldering to the back of a pot, but it's nothing onerous.

If you choose very high output pickups, you might want to swap to a 1 Megohm audio pot instead of the normal 500k audio pot for volume, which will give you a bit more treble from what can be a quite dull sounding pickup if played clean. But that's a choice, not a necessity.

[nathan]

Thanks fellas, appreciate the help. I probably should have specified but I'd be replacing with humbuckers.

Simon, I've been eyeing off the Iron Gear pups and have heard good things. I think they'd be a good option, especially since this is my first DIY axe and I probably shouldn't go too over budget.

[Simon Barden]

Iron Gear and Tonerider pickups are very similar in concept and quality (both ‘designed’ in the UK but made in China to reduce costs). There are quite a few similar brands in the US (like GFS pickups). Tonerider are probably easier to get in Australia as Pit Bull sell them.