Why upgrade your guitar?
Electronics.
If you are having a budget or midrange guitar setup, or even better having a fret dress and setup, with a few simple upgrades you can have a guitar equal in performance to a much more expensive “pro level” instrument.
Often manufacturers scrimp on things like jack sockets, potentiometers (volume and tone controls), wiring and switches to meet their price points on more affordable guitars and these components can quickly become unreliable or give poor performance. For a relatively small outlay you can replace these parts with quality American made parts from companies like CTS, Switchcraft, CRL and Oak as used on much more expensive guitars. For example a Switchcraft jack socket which will give years of reliable service (many from the 1950s are still in use in vintage instruments) costs around £4! No more crackling or cutting out like the Chinese 20p part the factory fitted.
Beyond these upgrades which will give you better control over your existing pickups if you want a different sound you may wish to change the pickups themselves as there is an almost limitless range of options from the big names like Fender, Gibson, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio etc to smaller “Boutique” manufacturers all around the world and also a growing number of more affordable ranges like Iron Gear Pickups which offer great tones at much lower prices.
If you know the type of sound you want I can find the right pickups or parts or will happily fit anything you have sourced yourself.
Nuts and Saddles for
acoustic and electric instruments
The vibrations of your strings and hence the basic tone of your acoustic guitar is transferred from the strings to the guitar body via the nut and saddle and the materials these parts are made of can affect the sound and amount of sustain your guitar can produce.
Cheap plastic parts can be replaced by bone or artificial bone alternatives like Tusq made by Graphtech (used by Taylor and many other premium brands) improving both tone and sustain. Also intonation improvements (how in tune the guitar sounds as you move up the neck) can be made if a straight saddle is replaced with a compensated one. If a suitable replacement saddle is not available to fit your guitar’s saddle slot I can make a compensated one from a bone blank as traditionally used on Martin guitars. I can also make a bespoke bone nut if no suitable item is available off the shelf.
On an electric guitar the results of replacing the nut are probably less noticeable as most of your sound is generated by the magnetic field of the moving strings being converted into electrical output by your pickups and converted into sound by your amplifier but the difference between a good and a great sounding electric guitar is mainly the resonance transferred into the timber of the body by the nut and bridge which “bleeds” into the tonal output of the guitar. There is an old adage that if an electric guitar resonates and produces a good tone unplugged it will usually sound great plugged in!
Particularly on Korean or Chinese Squier guitars the nut is often made of a very soft plastic material which can dampen the vibrations and a replacement nut can help “bring the guitar to life.”
Stratocasters and similar guitars can benefit tonally from a bridge with a bigger heavier sustain block made of steel as used on 50s and 60s instruments opposed to the cast zinc material fitted to more modern variants. Sometimes just the block can be replaced retaining the original bridge and saddles.
Conversely
Gibsons and similarly constructed guitars with
“stop tail” bridges can benefit from a 50s style lightweight aluminium
tailpiece instead of the modern cast zinc type. Aluminium can “open up”
the
tone and make the guitar feel more alive which is great for more clean
tones or
classic rock and blues sounds though if you play really heavy rock or
metal with
a lot of distortion and effects you may find that the original cast
zinc item
works better for those sounds.
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