Component swap :: 1986 Fender MIJ Stratocaster Contemporary [7.9 lbs]

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A local player for a funk band picked up this made in Japan Strat years ago and loves how it plays, but not so much on how it sounds.  He found the original pickups to be lacking output (all pickups 6.0k) so he brought it by the shop to install new guts under the pickgaurd.  The new pickups he supplied are GFS 1963 Strat Texas wound pickups with their outputs reading 6.1k (neck), 6.5k (middle - RW/RP) and 8.6k in the bridge.  The middle pickup's "RW/RP" stands for "reverse wound / reverse polarity" which means that it is hum cancelling when combined with the neck or bridge pickup (positions 2 & 4 on the 5-way switch).  He also supplied CTS pots, a 0.022 µf Orange Drop tone cap, new 5-way switch and Switchcraft output jack.

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New bridge & pots :: Warmoth Strat [8.0 lbs]

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This Warmoth Strat is approximately 30 years old and was tough to play.  The player and I found out that the bridge was vintage spaced and pushed the strings far too close to the edge of the fingerboard.  The solution was to swap it out for a new Callaham V/N bridge.  The "V" stands for vintage mount (6 screws) and the "N" is for narrow spacing.  Wow, what a difference in both playability and sustain.  (note the outer 2 bridge mounting screws were omitted as there must have been a 2 point bridge at some time with two large post holes in the body - we may opt to plug thesein the future).  We also replaced the pots as the old ones were pretty rough.  I used an Emerson Custom 500KA pot for the volume and went with Bourns pots for the tones.  I initially had Emersons in for the tones too but found the sweep far too subtle for most of the pot's travel for this guitar (around 2-3 they began to roll off rather quickly).  The Bill Lawrence bridge pickup's plastic mounting tabs were stripped out so they were plugged and re-tapped.

The pot swap was featured over on the vlog (video below).