The birth of Godiva

She is born! She is here!! As the bulge in Andy's trouser department will testify, I have successfully customised my Peavey guitar (now re-christened Godiva).

For the technically anally retentive (yup, Andy again), here's a brief overview of what I did... This could almost be subtitled "Don't believe what you read"... All will become apparent.

Initially, I thought I might buy yet another guitar (number 8) with some deeply offensive graphics and a rock 'n' roll image. Then I thought, why buy another when I could do up an existing guitar to sound perfect - and, as it turned out - look perfect.

Rather than simply change the pickups, I decided to remove the whole pickplate assembly and replace everything from the wood up.

Business end - I bought a Seymour Duncan Cool Rails pickup for the neck, a Seymour Duncan Vintage Rails for the mid and a Seymour Duncan 'Lil 59 humbucker for the bridge. After extensive research, apparently this would give me a '63 Strat sound with the neck / mid positions and a '59 Les Paul on the bridge... Hmmm, nice. Add to this, I couldn't just connect these to any old crappy electronics, I added brand new American pots (a push / pull on one to coil tap the 'Lil 59), an American 5 way selector and top of the range Sprague Orange Drop capacitors (a 0.1uF on the neck and a 0.047uF on the bridge). All of this was connected with new American Fender spec replacement wiring.

In terms of "don't believe what you read" - I followed Seymour Duncan's wiring diagram to the letter... And ended up with a non-operational tone circuitry. After much tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth and emails to Andy, a flash of inspiration came to me while driving to work one day! Seymour was wrong! I then copied the layout on the original Peavey plate and VOILA! Perfect.

Looks - I had commissioned a custom designed new pickplate after Googling for "Naked girl on a horse" (hence Godiva). I then added to this new chrome hardwear, stainless steel screws and abalone topped knobs.

Add to this the Grover locking machine heads I had already installed, the job was done....

UNTIL NEXT TIME!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you GODIVA!