Swapping over a fully loaded pickguard should be a fairly easy job.  Unfortunately that’s not always the case, particularly with a less popular make and cheaper parts.

I had my fingers crossed but from the start it proved to be far more complicated, couldn’t even get the old pickguard off with the neck in place.

The old pickguard was obviously a replacement at some point.  Whoever did it didn’t make a very tidy job of it either.  Unfortunately the cavity wasn’t deep enough for the new pickup either.  To do that properly the bridge has to come out so that I can get the router to sit flat.

That’s a bit neater, not that it’ll show when it’s done.

As is inevitable, none of the screw holes line up.  The ones like this are easy, just drill a new hole.

The ones that overlap but don’t quite line up are a lot more difficult.  The old hole has to be drilled and plugged….

and then levelled off.

The neck pocket was too small as well….

so it needed to be cut out gently.

With the new pickguard fitted another problem became apparent.  The Neck pickup was sitting at an angle which means the recess for that isn’t big enough either.

So out with the router again and remove a little more wood from there.

Now that it all fits, all I need to do is solder in the electrics and put it all back together.

Mostly all hardware went back together as it was.  Having taken the neck and bridge off the setup will need a quick check but the only part that needs to sorted from scratch are the pickup heights.

And there it goes, ready to Rock.