I'm off from work today before I leave on vacation, so I thought I'd put the tuners in. I am using some Kluson style Japanese Gotoh that used to be in
my #1 strat. They are great tuners, I just could never find big enough conversion bushings for that neck, so switched them out for Kluson Revolutions. I had thought about using those Klusons on here too, but didn't want to mess with reaming out the tuner holes.
Anyway, I popped the original bushings from this neck back in, then found that the shafts of the Gotoh tuners were too thick to fit. I pulled out all of the spare bushing sets in my parts drawer to take a look. All of the bushings that fit the Gotohs were too big for the holes in the neck. So, I ended up having to ream out the holes anyway. I took the bushings back out used a stepped drill bit by hand to open them up to 11/32 - this was maybe 1/64 larger, so it didn't take much. The bit didn't go quite deep enough though, so I finished with some adhesive 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around an 1/8" dowel. Then I carefully pressed the bushings in while listening for cracks, which there were none.
Then I finished up with my preferred style string tree - a Gotoh barrel type. I like these because there are no sharp edges and they are much smaller than most of the other options.
I got a shipping notification from Rose Pickups yesterday. Since I'm on vacation soon, I have a delivery hold from the post office. I expect those will then be delivered the day after we get back. The only thing left will be the body, and finishing the wiring. Oh, and all the actual assembly.
Speaking of the wiring, I am planning to disconnect both bridge pickup claws from their coils, then connect them together and have a single wire going to ground. The idea here is to make the claws a single shielding entity, like the cover of a PAF. As long as the claws are disconnected from the pickups, I can't imagine a problem with this. I'm not an expert on electronics though, so if this is a mistake, please let me know.
It would look like this:
I will also need to trim the top of the claws where they are hidden by the pickup cover. This will be a lot easier if they aren't connected to the pickups.
Edit: I finally stumbled on the guitar that started my thinking about combining single coils with different magnet types in a "humbucker", which ultimately started this whole journey.
This really cool Jag by SansRegret