The Parts Caster from the start of the year came back for a second pass on the bench! This was a very tight turn around between tours… The owner wanted me to swap out the bridge pickup for a Duncan Hotrails.  Also, It had seen battle on the road and needed a little tweak. All in all this was turned around in a couple of hours and back with the owner. 

First step was fixing the jack socket and the volume pot. Both were moving around and needed to be locked down. 

Once I’d fixed up the volume pot and the jack socket, I removed the strings and de-soldered the bridge pickup, removed the bridge and finally the pickup. I then mounted the new bridge pickup and got to work on soldering it to the switch and volume pot. 

Once connected, I always chuck on one string to just check and make sure we’re working with no grounding issues before moving on.  Everything is this case was fine and it was onto the next step, cleaning up the body and the neck and before polishing the frets.

This guy has 11-56 D’addario NYXL’s and is tuned to drop C and occasionally down to drop B. The thicker gauge strings help to hold the tension and play great! Once the strings are on, the heights, the radius and intonation are set and once again… good to go back on the road!