This guitar came to us for major upcycling! The customer wanted every visible bit of metal on the guitar changing to gold. He was resigned to keeping the old nickel frets but was very happy to learn about Jescar EVOgold fretwire and we were happy to install it for him… along with all the other bits and bobs.
The old electrics were all removed and replaced with some CTS, Oak Grigsby and Switchcraft parts. We copper screened the cavities & pickguard to shut out any unwanted noise from the controls.
Not everyone will see the benefit of spending a lot of money on a budget guitar. We try to be sensible when advising appropriate upgrades and take many different factors in to account. We know that we can usually make cheaper Squiers, Epiphones and such like into brilliant professional quality instruments and refretting is usually the biggest upgrade. This is because most budget guitars don’t have the best quality fretwire and it tends to be installed in a way that saves time for the company but is not necessarily accurate. This Squier was a few years old and had been well used. The neck was stable and already very comfortable for the owner so it was ideal for this type of work. All of our refrets include a Fully Optimised Service wherever possible.
The fun part of refurbishing a guitar like this is fitting all the shiny, new hardware. This one had every old screw replaced, locking tuners, stringtrees, a brass nut, pickups, bridge pickup surround, bridge, neck plate, rear string ferrules, strap buttons, jack holder, control panel, volume & tone knobs and a beautiful, custom milled, brass switch tip!
The cherry on top was a set of Optima Gold strings for the final setup. This guitar is not your average budget Squier Tele, it plays and sounds as good as any Custom Shop Tele we’ve played.