My new project for 2012 is to sort out a Squier Strat that I bought a couple of years ago for £50.

I have played an acoustic for 10+ years but I’m not very good. I bought the affinity strat of a friend as it was such a bargain, £50 with loads of stuff with it but the 5 way switch never worked. I always though one day I would sort it out and as I want to play a lot more this year I thought now is the time to get it going.

So help needed. I am yet to open it up to have a look a the switch which maybe a bit of a clean up will fix, otherwise I will need to get a new one and wile I’m at in I might as well get new pickups as the standard ones now have little specks of rust on them.

Any of the STW guitarists done anything similar?

switch

If you can’t be bothered messsing to much you can buy pre built/wired scratchplates

just google guitar spares

Yes, thats the bad boy. There isn’t much to it which is why I can probably fix it but as the link says it will be low quality so a similar but better quality replacement from ebay might be the answer.

I will open it up tomorrow night and get some photos on here if I can work out how to do it!

Replacing a switch is pretty easy. Just take a photo before you desolder it all then you’ll be able to see what goes where 🙂

For all sorts of guitar spares, I user http://www.axesrus.com for super service.
Wiring up a five way isn’t too hard – especially if you have the existing one to copy. Spots of rust on pickups aren’t an issue to the sound and a bit of T-cut might shine them up. (Don’t use wire wool or you’ll have furry pickups forevermore…

Just take your time, practice your soldering on scrap to start with and work in a clean, well lit area. Modding guitars is great fun and there’s loads of diagrams and the like on the internet. While you’re at it, do yourself a favour and swap the second (middle pickup) tone control onto the bridge pickup too. 🙂

Are you planning to solder it up yourself?

Rewiring budget guitars can take you into a total minefield… The pickups in an Affinity are sort of minimally decent, and don’t worry about a spot of rust. But, the switch is almost certainly rubbish (they do vary, Fender seem to just stick in whatever is lying around)

If you get into replacing pickups, well, you’re adding a lot of expense obviously but also there’s little point retaining any of the remaining parts- Squier pots are also usually cheap, and if the pickups are rusted there’s a decent chance there’ll be corrosion on the tracks too. So you end up with a total rebuild which will, done well with new parts, cost as much as a totally new, higher quality guitar.

But, it’s nice to revive a dead guitar. I’d really suggest you just do the switch at first- if you can solder it yourself especially. After that, if you want to do the pups check ebay as there’s a good second hand market, people are always shuffling pickups.

But do consider it as a whole. Affinities aren’t bad guitars at all but they can be very variable… How does the neck feel as it is? Rebuilding guitars is an addiction, it’s all too easy to throw good money after bad if you’re not careful

I have seen the pre wired replacements but that takes out all the fun.

Chipps, thanks for the suggestion, I will look into that. The replacing the pickups is really down to just having the thing open and thinking might as well. And I am tempted with replacing the bridge with something like this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/350488587255?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

However I wouldn’t know what to do with the middle and neck then as I would imagine the outputs would be unbalanced?

You could always lower the bridge pickup and raise the other two if that balances it out a little. Or just live with a louder pickup – then you’d be able to slam it into the bridge for leads without having to step on a separate ‘loud’ pedal