Disassembly Begins

I found some time last night to start taking the Stagemaster apart. Quite simple really, all I had to do was remove the strings then the 9 screws that holds the pickguard on. Here is picture of the bottom side of the pickguard with the electronics still attached. No surprises here; however, I'm almost sure I'm going to be using 250k pots instead of the 500k pots currently installed (the current crappy volume pot doesn't work anyway). I used 250k pots in my Strat and Les Paul so I'm thinking they will serve the purpose here just as well. If not, I'll put 5ook's back in.

The second photo is the electronics after removal. Kind of puts me to mind of the entrails of a gutted catfish. Removal is very simple, all you have to do is unattach everything from the pickguard and remove 3 wires, which actually attach to the guitar body itself. 2 of the wires (black and white) come from the output jack. The black wire (ground) is soldered to the housing of the volume pot, and the white is soldered to the middle pole of the volume pot.

The 3rd wire (black), is also a ground wire soldered to the volume pot's housing. The other end of the wire is fed through the guitar's body and is soldered to the tremolo's spring assembly--you have to take the guitar's back plate off to see where it is actually attached. I simply removed the solders at the volume pot where I could take the guts out.

This is all of the disassembly that is going to take place for this project. All of the electronics you see here are getting tossed. As soon as I get the new parts and pickguard, reassembly will begin. I have decided that I am not going to add a Strat style 2nd tone control. After all, this is not a Strat and I am not trying to make it into one. I will retain the original 1 volume and 1 tone control, so rewiring everything will be a breeze (I hope).

Crispy