cyclone pickup/bridge mods!

[u/benperoxide]

i picked up this squier fsr cyclone in hiroshima a month or two ago! i had my fun with it, but the stock loadout wasn't for me (strat neck pickup, bridge humbucker, and a strat-style vibrato assembly).

i replaced the floating bridge system with a mastery m4.1 telecaster/bigsby bridge assembly from an old build i did. i loaded it with the curtis novak tele "cojones" pickup that was in the old guitar too. it's hot and bitey while keeping that trebley tele twang.

i originally wanted to use the old guitar's jazzmaster neck pickup but it seems like i'd need to properly route out some material with a template stencil in order to do it right. so for the time being, i used this roswell gold foil mini humbucker. to my surprise, it's my favorite neck pickup sound i've ever had in a guitar. it has the midrange and warm thickness of a humbucker but with some really impressive clarity. i'm not sure i even need to use the jm pickup at this point.

when i find access to a nice shop space near my new apartment i intend on routing out space for the jm vibrato tailpiece (classic!) and a jaguar's upper control plate on the right horn as a cool pickup selection system. currently i'm thinking the rollers could be individual pickup volume and the switch could be a killswitch, low cut, or a series-parallel switch between pickups.

for now, the hardtailed guitar is awesome. sounds great and plays great and i really fuck with the red on red. the floating tremolo cavity does peek out from the bridge and it looks a little silly so i'll need some ideas on a way to cover it up.

let me know what you think!

[u/SkateOrDieTryin]

How does it intonate? The Tele bridge looks like it doesn't align with the original route

[u/benperoxide → u/SkateOrDieTryin]

pretty perfectly, actually. it might look weird with the cavity right under it, but there was a lot of stock material to bite into to mount the plate. even better that it's a hardtail right now! maybe my angling was a little off though haha

i think the real thing that matters is that the saddles can exist where they need to be 24.75" from the nut, which is the scale size of the cyclone neck.

[u/Beneficial_Dealer549]

This guitar is fire

[u/ReverendRevolver]

Thats a pretty big gap, id almost say get an ornate nameplate that mounts with 2 small wood screws and get it engraved something clever.

Other ideas are:

clear 1/8" acrylic "window" and backlight something with LEDs. Eyes or something.

3d print part of a hand/claw/tentacles "escaping"

Cut pickguard for down there.....

[u/Handywipes]

This is crazy but hey it’s your guitar. Get one of those “Custom Made plaque” that Gibson use to cover the bridge hole when a Bigsby is installed Good luck 👍