A 6-string tinkerer found a guitar neck with a unique inlay design, inspiring this bright color scheme and some active-pickup experimentation.
It all started with this yellow inlaid neck I saw on eBay/Amazon from China. I loved the inlays and thought it would be fun to design a yellow-themed guitar.
You all will recognize the body as an Epiphone Les Paul SL, which I bought new without the neck. I’m not a single-coil guy, so I swapped out the single-coils and electronics for two Wilkinson Hot Rail pickups. I ordered the neck ($80 total) from China, and it arrived in 12 days! The neck is high quality—the inlays are done very well, and the frets were smoothed and polished with an unfinished plain headstock. I took the body to my local hardware store and found a yellow spray paint for the headstock that was a very, very close match to the body color. The neck fit well and matched up perfectly for intonation.
The Wilkinson Rails worked out fine, but I had a couple of issues. Even though I put two layers of shielding paint in the body, there was still some minor buzz.
Also, I couldn’t get the bridge pickup high enough under the strings and had to use some spacers to raise the pickguard just around that pickup. Even then, I wasn’t happy with the tones. The neck played great, and after sleeping on it (the decision, not the guitar), I decided to go active. I had an extra set of active Guitarheads humbuckers. These are great active pickups, which I use in many of my guitars.
Terry Kempler
I carefully measured a way to put a 9-volt battery compartment through the back and into the control cavity. This way, I only needed to cut through about 1/4" of wood instead of routing out an entire body section. I had to widen the pickup routes in the body, with the bridge being the most work and dust flying everywhere. I then needed to widen the pickup cutouts on the pickguard, which was easier by using a Dremel saw and some filing. Lastly, I had to relocate the output jack because this was where the battery compartment was located.
The output jack was relocated to the side of the guitar where it belongs anyway. All the wiring (volume/3-way switch/tone) and such fit perfectly under the pickguard, and the guitar sounds great with no noise.
I don’t even consider the guitar an Epiphone anymore—it’s my Custom Yellow Active LP.
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A spotlight on real-life DIY adventures, from a steampunk-inspired work of art to a tone-happy Strat-style to a 1961 Gibson restoration.
We asked our readers to get their mods out. Here are some of the coolest.
SHANE KELLY: STEAMPUNK STRADIVARIUS
When Shane Kelly grabbed this mid-2010s Dean Cadillac X at a pawnshop for $100, he saw it as something more. After some routing, the removal of a black finish, and the raiding of a local hardware store, it’s now a steampunk tone machine. He notes: “While the hardware”—all for show—“definitely adds weight, it is balanced out by the removal of wood, so it weighs about the same as a standard Les Paul.” How’s it sound? Kelly says it’s killer!
Check out the tube-driven headstock and gauges. We don’t think this is what ZZ Top meant when they wrote “Got Me Under Pressure,” but….
CARY CUMMINGS: SKULLDUGGERY
When Cary Cummings dreamt of jamming with Steve Vai in Pompeii (Was that during or post-lava, Cary?), this guitar was in his hands. So, he brought it to life. His “Skull Top” was originally a made-in-Mexico arctic-white Fender Standard Tele. He refinished the top, leaving the sides and back white, and added a Warmoth T-style neck, and Gotoh Tuners. Cummings also painted the neck dots and headstock to match the blue top. The original bridge was replaced with three Wilkinson-compensated brass saddles, and he added a Bigsby B50 vibrato. Electronics were swapped with a Sprague orange drop tone cap, a Seymour Duncan Jerry Donahue Lead Tele bridge pickup, and a Gibson Burstbucker Pro in the neck. Now it’s ready for Día de los Muertos.
JOHN HEINZ: GILDED GUILD
This alien was born as a Guild X-79 with a red finish that John Heinz scored at a guitar show—minus hardware and kinda trashed—for $35. He stripped and repainted it with auto lacquer: lapis-pearl blue over a black shade with color-change flakes. The original stop tailpiece got bumped for a Kahler trem, and Heinz installed an EMG and a Kent Armstrong pickup along with Grover tuners. He also carved a comfort cut into the back and made the aluminum pickguard. “It played and sounded great, but I found it a little uncomfortable to play, with the very long top horn,” he says. So, now this space critter may be in a galaxy far, far away. Heinz swapped it, along with some cash, for a Gibson Les Paul BFG.
LUIS MARCELO FERNÁNDEZ SEOANE: A HIGHLY PERSONALIZED STRAT
Here’s a partscaster that’s, well, the sum of its parts, if not more. The neck and body are from Fender.com, but the rest of his guitar is highly subjective. Luis Marcelo Fernández Seoane was seeking many switching options for its Fender Jeff Beck Hot Noiseless pickups. Check the pickguard and you’ll see an add-neck switch, a series/parallel switch, a blower switch, a middle tone control wired for the neck and middle pickups, and a bottom tone control for the bridge pickup. The blower switch is wired so he can choose the combination of pickups going straight to the output jack. “For not much more than a stock model, and much less than a Custom Shop offering, I got the Strat I always wanted,” Seoane says. His hotrod also includes a two-point Strat trem ordered with six vintage saddles and Schaller locking tuners. Plus, he steel-wooled the back of the neck for a more organic playing feel. The output is a Pure Tone stereo jack. Why? “I prefer the Pure Tone TRS-style jack, because even though I’m only using the tip and the sleeve, the unconnected ring provides an added measure of security,“ Seoane adds.
TATE FERGUSON: SIMPLY ELEGANT
Here’s an S-style created after Covid ended Tate Ferguson’s gigs for a spell. Starting with a Muslady kit he bought on eBay for $76 including shipping, he did a little sanding, so the neck and body fit together well, and the bridge and tuners that came with the kit did the trick. He finished the body and the back of the neck with a few coats of Tru-Oil gunstock finish. Then things got real. The string slots on the kit’s plastic nut were too narrowly spaced, so Ferguson installed a nut he made from a dog-chew cattle bone he’d bought at a pet shop. “There’s enough bone for a dozen nuts on one of those,” he notes. “I’ve made guitar and mando nuts from scratch now and then, using the StewMac nut files I bought many years ago.” He also made the lovely pickguard from faux abalone, sourced via Amazon, and attached it with Velcro, and installed a Guitar Madness Songbird (Firebird-style) pickup. “The tone knob is a Fender no-load pot, and the knobs come from a long-defunct 1980s MXR limiter pedal,” adds the impressive recycler. Plus, the 3-spring whammy holds its tuning well. “I’ve been messing around with solidbody electric guitars since 1969, and I’m starting to get better at it,” Ferguson says, modestly.
NIKOLAS SIMON: BACK TO THE FUTURE
“In a world full of mods, I decided to bring my 1961 Gibson Melody Maker back to original spec,” says Nikolas Simon. So out went the Seymour Duncan Hot Stack Tele pickup. (That pickup’s base was shaved to fit in the original cavity without routing, and there was a push-pull pot for single-coil tone.) “I had a set of original early ’60s pots that were still wired from the factory, and sourced a 1964 pickup to complete the ‘mod’ for this versatile guitar,” Simon says.
SCOTT HASKITT: SWITCHED UP
Scott Haskitt “absolutely fell in love with this guitar” when he got it, but also loves the idea of bridge and neck pickups with the same amount of highs.
After a few different pickups sets, he found a solution: installing a new tone cap and a bridge-resistor toggle on this Novo Miris T 2021. He also swapped in a Bliss humbucker (soapbar) and a T-Bar Bridge (with P-90 characteristics) by McNelly Pickups. “The DPDT on/on switch is wired to toggle between the bridge pickup with a 500k pot (up) and a 47k resistor in the circuit (down), so it sounds more equal to the neck pickup.”
The neck pickup does not ever connect to the resistor. When the resistor is not engaged (up), the whole circuit uses the Novo stock .022 tone capacitor, and when the resistor is engaged (down), the whole circuit uses a 0.0015 capacitor, for completely different and more usable sounds with the tone pot rolled all the way off. The Novo uses 500k for both volume and tone pots.
KRISTOFFER HAGEN: THE “PG’S FAULT” MOD
Kristoffer Hagen says, “I fell deep in a rabbit hole of Premier Guitar mod articles.” In particular, “Bass Bench: Cheap and Easy Bass Mods,” from 2012, and “Three Must-Try Guitar Wiring Mods,” from 2014, inspired his project. It started with a B-stock Warwick RockBass that played well, but its active electronics didn’t provide the tones Hagen wanted. “The finish concept was stolen from a YouTube video,” he relates. “The color was supposed to be dark blue but turned out a little green. I settled on Nordstrand pickups because they looked unique.” The “Bass Bench” article fueled his idea for a series/parallel switch. And in the wiring article, he discovered the Stellartone ToneStyler rotary cap switch. “Those pickups and wiring turned an uninteresting bass into a complete monster,” he attests. In the photo for Hagen’s mod project, you’ll see: 1) the original bass, 2) the striped wood grain, 3) the routing for soapbar pickups, 4) the “dark blue” staining, 5) the silver finishing wax to fill the grain, 6) the surface wax, 7) the new passive electronics, and 8) the Nordstrand Big Single pickups in place along with a black bridge.
The emerging parts market in the ’80s, a luthier friend, and a cousin who studied acoustic engineering helped this bassist create a one-of-a-kind instrument.
I wanted to build something different that would take advantage of the emerging parts market that was becoming available to players and that would also accommodate my playing needs. My neighbor was a carpenter, so I built the body and the electronics cavity cover from a piece of wood in his shop. I don’t recall what kind of wood I used, but I remember there were no knots, and the grain was very tight. The neck was from Philip Kubicki. The bridge is one of the first issues of the Kahler bass tremolo. The pickups are an original first-year set of EMG active PJs. The tuning keys are from Schaller. It has an original Hipshot D’Tuner and a Fathead attached to the back of the headstock for added sustain. I did the paint job ... I know ... it was the ’80s.
This bass was the prototype for a guitar that Drew built the following year that would eventually become the Guild Blade Runner. The Blade Runner is the guitar most people recognize Joe Perry playing in the Aerosmith/Run DMC “Walk This Way” video.
It sounds incredible and plays like a dream. The holes were strategically placed. My cousin was an acoustic engineer, and he made some suggestions as to where to make the holes based on the properties of the wood and acoustic instruments he’d studied. While it looks like an ’80s trainwreck, it has amazing unplugged resonance, tone, and sustain. I’ve never played another electric bass that resonates like this one. I’ve used it on jazz gigs as it can sing like a Jazz bass, it can give you the illusion of an acoustic bass once you dial it in, it’s great for soul and R&B, and it’s ferocious for hard rock and metal. It saw a lot of action in its day and, unfortunately, suffered some damage from a 15-foot fall off a stage.
While it looks like an ’80s trainwreck, it has amazing unplugged resonance, tone, and sustain.
When Drew made the Blade Runner for Joe Perry, he followed many of my cousin’s suggestions and a lot of what went into this bass to determine where to make the holes in the Blade Runner body. If you’ve ever played a Blade Runner or talk to anyone who has, they’ll tell you it’s an incredibly loud guitar unplugged and has endless sustain. The cuts weren’t random: There was a lot of thought and science that went into how it was done.
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.