Here’s a DIY project for tone chasers: how to turn a $199 single-coil Squier Bullet Strat into a beefy humbucker-voiced 6-string, with coil-splitting in the neck pickup.
If you try this project yourself, you’ll need three Seymour Duncan JB Jr. pickups, a Pure Tone Multi-Contact Output Jack, one .022MFD orange drop capacitor, two 500k CTS potentiometers, a push/pull pot DPDT on/on switch assembly, 60/40 rosin core solder, 22 AWG non-shielded PVC-insulated circuit wire, heat shrink tubing, small zip ties, and a set of your favorite guitar strings. For tools, Dave uses a Hakko Soldering Station, small clippers, small round-nosed pliers, a Phillips screwdriver, a 1/2" nut driver, a strip of painters or masking tape, and a small jar with a lid. A Stratocaster circuit schematic will also come in handy for reference. You’ll also need to brush up on your soldering skills. (Consult “Soldering 101: A Step-by-Step Guide” at premierguitar.com to get on the good foot.)
Step one will be removing and stripping the pickguard, and then cutting wires within the circuitry so the new components can be put into place. Since this is an S-style guitar, much of the work will be done on that pickguard, which helps simplify the process. Installing the pickups—in this case, Seymour Duncan JB Jr.’s—is simple. You might need to do some routing on the pickguard to accommodate the new pots. Duncan’s JB Jr.’s come with about 10 inches of four-conductor circuit wire already attached. Strip off about 3" of that wire’s outer casing. Then you’ll see red, white, black, green, and ground wires. Peel about 1/2" of casing from the tips of each of those smaller, color-coded wires. For the neck pickup, the green and bare wire are tied together and attached to ground—soldered to the top of the middle (tone) pot. Dave carefully explains each step. For a written version with photos, see “DIY: Hot-Rodding a Squier Bullet HT” in the May 2023 issue or at premierguitar.com. There's also a companion video, specifically focused on replacing the output jack. Got a question for Dave? Go to scalemodelguitars.com.
Luxe looks and a sweet playing feel make this Squier an anniversary edition worth celebrating.
Slinky playability. Very nice construction quality. An attractive, celebratory mash-up of Fender style elements.
Neck feels slightly generic.
$599
Squier 40th Anniversary Stratocaster
fender.com
Premier Guitar doesn’t often review anniversary edition instruments—most of them being marketing exercises in disguise. But the Squier 40th Anniversary Stratocaster genuinely seems to embody much about where Squier has been and the reliable source for quality, affordable, and, yes, beautiful guitars they have become.
At $599, the 40th Anniversary Stratocaster lives on the higher side of the Squier pricing scheme. But there is much—in terms of both style and substance—that makes this Stratocaster feel special. The mash-up of 1950s design cues (gold anodized pickguard) and 1970s elements (block inlays) really works in spite of how easy it is to screw up a Stratocaster’s graceful lines. And the spots where Squier added flash, like those inlays and neck binding, reflect a genuine concern for craftsmanship and executing the little details.
In practical terms, the 40th Anniversary Strat specs out and feels quite like a Classic Vibe Stratocaster, which is a good thing. The body is nyatoh and the fretboard is laurel, but apart from the 9.5" radius fretboard, which always feels a bit flat on a Strat for me, neither result in major deviations from classic Strat weight or touch. Output from the alnico 5 pickups felt a little more contoured, less edgy, and less punchy on the treble side than the pickups in the Vintera ’60s Stratocaster and ’80s E Series Stratocasters I used for comparison. But apart from missing that micro-trace of extra spank that cuts through an intense spring reverb signal, there was little to upset the surfy state of very stylish bliss this Squier induced each time I plugged it in.
Regretting that his 1968 “Hendrix” Strat got away, a guitarist decides to recreate it 50 years later.
It’s 1968 and I’m a 13-year-old Hendrix wannabe, like a thousand other teenage guitar players. In a pawnshop on Elm Street in Greensboro, North Carolina, hangs a brand new olympic white Stratocaster with a rosewood fretboard, oozing Hendrix vibe (many pawnshops were official Fender dealers back then). It hung there for a year, gaining a stain from the neck hanger which looked like the infamous burnt cigarette mark you see on some Strats. I worked an entire summer painting fences to earn the $300 it took to take that guitar home. (I worked the next summer to earn enough to buy a ’69 drip-edge Pro Reverb).
Fast-forward to 1975 and I’m a college student playing with a friend in dorms and such on campus. He convinces me to buy a bass, since my Strat and his acoustic guitar were a mismatch. So, I naively sold my 1968 Strat and bought a new 1975 P bass for $175 (it was $5 more for the custom black color). These are two of several instruments that “got away” from me over the years.
In 2017, I found a Squier Strat neck on Craigslist with the late ’60s/early ’70s wide headstock. It sparked the idea to recreate my 1968 Strat. The only thing I couldn’t find was the right “white” body. Most are cream, not really faded olympic white. So, I settled for daphne blue.
The neck has a reproduction 1968-1970 Strat decal. The serial number for those years was stamped on the neck plate. The neck plate I have is a reproduction with the Fender “F” on it and Serial #240981 (from the Jimi Hendrix Woodstock Strat). The body is poplar from Guitar Fetish’s XGP line. Tuners and neck plate are relic’d. The pickguard was purchased loaded with Fender Custom Shop 1969 reissue pickups.
The pickguard features:
- New Fender Custom Shop ’69 Stratocaster Abby (Abigail Ybarra) pickups initialed and dated by Abby
- New Fender ’60s-style 5-way toggle switch
- New Fender CTS pots (top quality, if you know them)
- New Fender/Switchcraft output jack (with two wire leads for easy installation)
- The same American-made, top-quality, cotton-wrapped (shielded) wires used in the Fender Custom Shop (double-cloth jacket has a waxed cotton outer braid and a Celanese inner braid, just like Leo Fender used)
- High-quality, no-lead soldering tin free from oxidation (the same type that’s used on high-end stereo systems)
- New Fender pickguard with matching pickup covers and knobs
The tremolo bridge is from a Jimi Hendrix reissue Strat (purchased from Stratosphere). I completed the build with setup on December 29, 2017, and the entire project cost about $500.
It stays in tune better than any other guitar I own and is my favorite … second only to my 1990 Clapton “Blackie” Strat that my wife gave me as a wedding present in 1991.
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