A fairly simple job, swap the pickups for a pair of “Bare Knuckles” and, while I’m at it, put in a Bone nut.

First of all I need to take out all the old wiring.  The old pickup was coil tapped but the customer doesn’t want to bother with the new one so I need to bin the push/pull switch.

Putting in the new pickups is just screws and a little bit of soldering.

The Nut is a little more time consuming.  First gently remove the old one and clean out the nut slot.

Unfortunately the nut slot is just slightly too large for the pre-cut blanks I’ve got so I need to make one from scratch.  I cut the rough shape from a large blank and then ground it down to the right thickness.  I use double-sided tape and a block of wood so that I can accurately grind it without losing my fingertips.  3.4mm is what I’m aiming for.

With the thickness right I just need to get the shape sorted.  It fits at least!

I’ve marked it up so that I know which side is going to be the bass side and which is the treble.

With the nut fitted, mark up the string spacings

With the appropriate file cut the slots..

Measuring the action at the first fret

After that I need to just complete a standard setup.  Starting with the neck set..

A small adjustment to the truss rod.  The trouble there is the string tree is right in the way and I can’t get the allen key in.

Not a big problem, I’ll just have to take it out for a while..

With that done it’s time for the action height at the other end…

It wasn’t bad, just a small turn on the bass side.

With the action set I just need to make sure the intonation is OK..

Since I’ve changed the pickups I do need to check the pickup heights.  Measuring them is a good starting point but the only real way to do it is to plug it in and see how it sounds.  Too high and the output might be a too distorted, too low and the sound may be a little to wooly. there needs to be a balance between the two pickups as well, not to mention the bass and treble outputs..

Job done….