Main Description

A standard pickguard, but with a reverse angled bridge single coil for a Fender® Strat® and similar guitars

This pickguard is exactly the same as any other post 1980 Stratocaster (which we'd consider the "modern" standard) but with one big difference - the bridge single coil has been reversed!

This configuration is sometimes called the "voodoo" mod, and is designed to replicate a left handed player playing a right handed guitar upside down. Now - with most guitars - that doesn't make a blind bit of difference to the sound - theres countless players flipping over Gibson® and Gretsch® and acoustic guitars, stringing them in reverse (or not!) and getting on with it - sounds the same, just got to fight with the knobs getting in the way- but every now and then, you get someone doing it with a Strat® - and whilst neck and middle pickups remain the same (pole staggering on the pickups not withstanding anyway) - the bridge pickup, which is slanted, becomes reversed!

Now, tonally - that changes things - the bridge pickup is slanted to keep the treble strings "bright" (as bright as they can possibly be!) but the bass strings need a bit more string movement to retain their body - the slanting sorts that - so reversing it, reverses the behavior. The treble strings fatten up a it, and the bass becomes "tighter" - and it works! Hendrix did it, Dick Dale apparently did it - tonally, its very distinctive!

So, this pickguard, is designed to replicate that idea- relatively simple mod to give you a different sort of animal in the bridge slot without having to flip a guitar over! (obviously, if your right handed - if your lefty who wants to play like a righty playing a lefty whos aping a lefty playing a righty... thats just too far down the rabbit hole for me to get my head around!)

Its worth noting too, that a right handed strat would have right handed staggered poles on the pickups, so even with this plate, your not getting it exactly there - BUT - if your building from scratch/gutting a guitar - stick a set of left handed pickups in there (we make them!) - and your pretty much exactly replicating the idea.

Routing

As you expect really - its 3 single coils, just the bridge pickup is reversed - one thing to watch out for on the guitar - swimming pool routes will take pretty much anything, as will most "loose" humbucker routes - but if your guitars been chewed out to SCSCSC, chances are your going to need to take some of the wood out to make this work.


Fender®, Squier®, Stratocaster® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC

Other Part Compatibility

For some unfathomable reason, the humble Tele® has seen more "factory" modifications then any other guitar i can think of - from the glaringly obvious, like dual humbuckers fitted with locking tremolos, to the frustratingly subtle (different size control plates or bridge routes!) - so, just as a little bit of re-assurance, its probably worth listing a few of the common parts that interact with the pickguard here, that'll commonly turn up on the same guitars

Why Can/Cant I move pot holes?

Right then - this has been in the offing for a while now, so probably worth explaining whats going on with the pot hole options!

We're, slowly but surely, switching all of our pickguard stock over to "No pot" versions - and that means we can drill them out to order - so if your in the mood for switching over to master tone, master volume? Just Volume? No holes? Or just moving the volume pot out of the way so you dont keep hitting the thing? You can - its an easy job, so its all done at no extra cost, and it gets you dangerously close to custom pickguards without the supidly long lead times and eye watering costs!

However - theres a few little caveats that are worth noting.

Returns

Lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first eh?

Once pickguards are drilled - theres no going back - so worth being aware that once its drilled, its yours - the pickguards come with a standard config loaded up, so whilst these are drilled to order, we will accept them back as a return/refund if you change your mind. (and obviously, if the plates shipped without any holes in there, no harm no foul - can come back!)

Any deviation from "the standard" (remember, thats no always 1V 2T "normal layout" though) - the pickguard is no longer returnable. Frankly, it makes selling the returns next to impossible. I wish it wasn't, but lets be honest - you can make some pretty weird setups here, so lets just be sensible about it. If its non-standard, its non-returnable.

So, its really worth using all the resources here to make sure its exactly what you want before commiting to buy the thing! Theres spec diagrams under the tech spec tab, theres photos of all the colours under the "Tortoise shell/whites/pearls explained" tabs - your as well informed with what your getting as you can be (and again, if in doubt? Just buy the thing without the pot holes and drill it out yourself - 10mm drill bit and a cordless drill - easy job - we'll even tell you where to put the holes)

Why cant i do it on all colours?

Put simply? Because some of the plates are already drilled out - we're switching the entire stock over as we get new plates in, but as you can imagine, its not exactly a quick process. Anything where you can customise, you'll be faced with the drop down menus to select what you want (and the picture updates to show what your getting) - anything you cant customise, will revert back to "standard" and show the "Please Note - The selected colour/material is currently not available for customisation" message - you can still order the plate, but you cant move the pot holes unfortunately.

What is Pickguard Style/Mount?
Rather then having multiple product listings on the site to cover "minor" variations within pickguards (especially in the more specialist stuff!) - we're just building them in as options within single products - so with common plates, like an Modern Strat? You can pick between left and right handed versions - more niche stuff? Like the Locking Trem plate - thats got loads more options in there, right down to pickup options (HBSCSC, SCSCSC and HBSCHB) - just keeps the site looking tidy, even if it does hide a few of the options a little deeper. Easier to dig deeper then have to trawl through 10 pages of completely irrelivent plates though!

Hole Postitioning

This is, despite my best efforts - dull as dish water! I'm describing the space between holes here, so dont expect anything life changing - but, worth having the details, and i'll try and include a few little tit-bits to watch out for. Just remember, that the holes are drilled out to 10mm, so they'll take Alpha, CTS and Bournes pots.

And in closing - Pickguards, once drilled away from the standard hole plan, come under the remit of Custom work and as always, if you've got any questions what so ever, please feel free to get in touch with us and we can talk through all the finer details of your proposed build.

Tortoise Shell Explained

You’ve probably noticed with the pickguards, we do A LOT of different variations in tortoise shells – and even then, we barely scratch the surface when it comes to completing the line-up.

Basically, Tortoise shell, originally, way back when, when it first started (long before the electric guitar was a thing) was just that – pieces of a tortoises shell, fixed together into a shape, and polished until semi-transparent (some of the early acoustic pickguards were actually made this way)

Now, obviously, none of us want to see a return to those practises, but seemingly, everyone liked “the look” – so with the advent of plastic in the early part of the 20th century, science found a cheaper way (it wasn’t until the seventies when trade in hawksbill turtle (the main source of Tortoise shell) shells became illegal!)

The first “plastic” Tortoise Shells were made from Nitrate plastics, usually Celluloid – and, frankly, it’s pretty gorgeous! Its semi-transparent, it’s got a sort of leopard skin look to it, and it soon worked its way onto guitars (again, most acoustics)

The problem is – Celluloid plastics are astonishingly flammable – they have a low point of combustion, and once they’re burning, they don’t go out until the fuels gone, or they flame is deprived of oxygen. As you can imagine, no one really liked working with Celluloid. It was risky to use (cutting = friction = heat) it was dangerous to store, and it wasn’t really suitable for the job at hand ( it changed colour when exposed to sunlight, it warped, it shrank, it was generally, pretty badly behaved!)
Never the less, it did eventually find its way onto electric guitars by the late 50s and early 60s, but was soon replaced for something more suitable and much safer.

Nowadays, you see Tortoise shells in either Polyoxymethylene (more stable as a material, but still very flammable) or PVC (which is fairly bomb proof, but does give off toxic fumes if burnt)

Now, getting to the modern day – Tortoise shell comes in 5 “variants” for us (ignoring the Celluloid offerings, they’re still out there, and great for historical accuracy, but just be VERY careful with them – not only in buying them/storing your guitar once its fitted, but also in actually sourcing the stuff, we’ve yet to find a factory who will even consider making a plate with it (too big a fire risk) and even when we do, its very cost prohibitive (more expensive to buy the things then we could ever dream of selling them for!) – there are guys out there making them though – but as a rough guide, expect to pay upwards of £150+)

Pearls Explained

Pearloid plates are similar to the tortoise shells, but theres a little less subtly between them, and they dont really have anything overly interesting in their history - as far as i can tell, they're always been PVC, and the variations in colour and pattern are pretty easy to follow.

So lets take a closer look.

"Whites & Creams" Explained

Ok, even i'll conceed that this isn't the most thrilling of toics at this point, but there is actually plenty of confusion when it comes to the "off white" pickguard colours, so seeing as we're ticking off pearls and tortoise shell varients, we might as well address the parchments, mints and creams too.

So lets get stuck in