Making a fat strat

So,  one of my friends has an old Squier strat and then bought an Epiphone Les Paul, which he traded in after a few years for a Fender Strat.  I guess he misses that warm humbucker tone, so we decided to add a nice humbucker to the Squier to see how it sounds and figure out the process.  If everything works well, we're going to put the humbucker on the Fender in the coming months.

I did completed this a month or so ago, so I only took some pics of the wiring (to remember how it was hooked up) and one of the final product.

I stripped all the parts off of the pickguard and used the humbucker to trace an outline to cut out.  I would love to use a dremel tool but I don't have one... so...  I improvised.  I know this is a terrible method, but I used a pair of large wire cutters to snip off bits of the plastic, and then used a file to smooth out the rough edges.  Gah!  The cuts aren't straight.  I used one of the mounting holes from the old pickup, and since it's the slanted bridge pickup on a strat, the pickup doesn't exactly align with the strings... it's unfortunate, but it works.

Oh yeah... in order to at least partially retain some of the original sound, I added a coil tap to that pickup so he can use it as a single coil.  It's on a tiny little toggle switch that I put in just out of frame on this picture.

The sound gets a little funky when using both the bridge humbucker and the single coil in the middle, but only when the coil tap is off.  I'm not sure how the Squier pickups are wired, but I think one of the humbucker coils is wired opposite the single coil, and they're cancelling each other out.  Anyway... end goal of this endeavor  is to put this humbucker in the Fender guitar, and this was just a way to do it once and make the mistakes now so I don't screw up the nice guitar.

Lessons learned:

1.  If you want it to look pretty, buy a new pre-cut pick guard..

2.  Find a wiring diagram for the guitar.  Gotta make sure all the parts play nice with each other.


Anything else I should take into consideration?  Let me know... soundularelectronics@gmail.com