Ambitious Squier Bullet Mods part 1

Well Not That Ambitious

I’ve had some crazy guitar mod ideas before that after a few minutes of research made me realise that they were not a good idea to try. This first one however is a good idea because it addresses a practical purpose as well as being very satisfying to pull off.

I did pull it off after a little bit of trepidation, overcoming my fear of whizzing power tools (a dremel-style rotary tool in this case) and the inertia of actually getting off my backside to do the modification in mind.

And so I cut a section out of the body at the neck pocket and a corresponding piece out of the pickguard.

Why Did I Need to Start Carving Holes in My Guitar?

I recently got a new neck for my Squier Bullet Hardtail Strat. The frets were worn in the same place as all my necks wear first. The wear is not that much to be fair, but it does cause a bit of buzz on certain chords and fretted notes, which I am normally able to sort out with a bit of gentle hammering and rubbing to get the next fret along to sit a little lower than the worn fret. Not really an ideal long term solution. The buzz always comes back!

I’m yet to try doing a fret level myself and I’m too lazy to find someone to do it to be honest. The other option I thought of would be to get the neck refretted with stainless steel frets and thereafter not likely to need to worry about fret wear again in my lifetime. Hmmm, but that would mean some expense in getting the neck refretted, at a premium with stainless steel frets and how good would the job be?

I thought about doing it myself; getting some tools, the fret wire and learning on a non-priceless neck! But doing a refret for the first time is enough, let alone trying it with stainless steel frets and the tools I was likely to acquire would be low-budget at best. Just how much expense would this end up being?

Then I found a guy selling affordable necks with levelled, stainless-steel frets, just 2 days delivery away for probably the same or less than the cost of a refret. I decided to give it a go. The neck is really nice with medium jumbo frets, beautifully finished, perfectly level and very similar in style to the old Bullet neck. It’s actually a little fatter (which I like).

The Neck Pocket Mod

The minor gripe though is that the trussrod adjustment is at the heel, which means that truss rod adjustments require removal of the neck… A right hassle!

Hence this modification. When I did some searching on this I discovered that this is how some Suhr guitars are done. A cutaway at the neck heel with a provided, cut-down hex wrench to fit into place and adjust the bolt.

I cut down an existing hex wrench and did my own DIY version. I don’t care about authentic vintage aesthetics, just something that is similar to vintage (like the colour mainly). I welcome all sorts of modern applications to the traditional designs if they actually make the thing easier to setup and better to play.

A little extra thing, which I doubt is all that necessary is to maintain the continuity of the copper shielding for the pickup cavity. That may need replacing from time to time as it may prove to be a bit fragile, but it does at least mean that the Faraday cage to shield from noise is still 100% intact… for what it’s worth.

I could have cut out less wood and kept the wall of the cavity intact, but I didn’t think of that in time and it would have been a lot more complicated to do (for me at least)… Maybe next time if I do another one (I already have another one planned actually!)

There’s More to Come

So this is the first mod I’ve done in my latest list of “To Do’s” for my Bullet Hardtail. To think I was planning on selling this guitar a couple of years ago. I’m glad I kept it. It’s been one of my favourite guitars since I got it. It deserves all the upgrades and improvements I decide to throw at it.