New axe arrives in one piece, and all is right with the world ...

Wednesday, May 6, 2015 -- Been busy today but took time to drag the big cardboard box on my front porch inside to the living room -- my new-to-me Squire Bullet strat!

Come to Papa! Woot!

The seller had it packed mostly in newspapers -- ugh! -- but when I got down to the axe, he had it wrapped in copious layers of bubble wrap. Thank you, seller!

When I had her unwrapped, I found what I expected -- a gently used Arctic White Squire strat in excellent shape. I plugged her in to my V-Amp to check if the description was accurate -- the electronics were inoperative.

That description was the key reason I bought the guitar ... guitar electronics are really pretty damn simple. I don't really get the mystery and mystic about guitar wiring and components. They really are simple.

The first place I started to check was to remove the output jack. Bingo! There was one wire on the jack, the signal wire, which was wired to GROUND. There was no ground wire at the jack, which makes me wonder how the hell it EVER worked.

With the pickguard removed, all of the electronics looked good. I'm not sure where the ground wire went, but I'll need to add one to go from ground to the output jack. Other than that, I'm not sure yet what else is wrong.

Interestingly, this strat has a hard tail bridge -- no tremolo! I'm not complaining, at least this will be one guitar I can keep in tune (and I don't have to block the trem to make it happen!). Actually I can't complain about m Peavey Raptor strat copy ... its Fender-style trem actually stays in pretty good tune.

I'm going to keep my eye for future projects on eBay. I really, really want a Telecaster or a new semi-hollow body guitar. I don't have the budget for anything much, but it doesn't hurt to look.

I'm still in the market for a short-scale bass, which are plentiful and cheap brand new. I just need to come up with some additional cash first (and an OK from my wife).

Rock on!

POST SCRIPT, May 6, 2015, 11:55 p.m.  Thought I would update this entry and report my "DUH!" moment and record it for posterity.

The mystery of the missing ground to the output jack was solved tonight -- after I went to the trouble of adding a ground from the pots to the jack. The schematic I referred to indicated a separate ground wire from the pots to the output jack -- but that's not entirely correct.

The red "wire" that ran to the ouput jack was not actually a "wire" -- it was a "shielded cable," though it did NOT look like one. The wire attached to the output jack (the ground, no less!) looked like one stranded single conductor wire.

Had looked closely at the other end of the cable, I would have noticed that it was two conductors; as my son often says, "There's your problem!"

I had it back together (with an separate ground wire) and when I plugged in my amp, it sounded like a dead short to ground -- despite the 60 cycle hum one heard when touching the tip of the 1/4-inch guitar plug. Once I plugged the cable into the guitar, it went completely silent -- no hum, no nothing.

So back apart she comes.

I removed the ground I just ran, and clipped the cable and very carefully stripped back the outer insulation to review the inner conductor. This was one itty-bitty cable (at least for my fat fingers it was). I tinned the cable ends, then connected them to the output jack. I hooked the amp up and pecked on the pickups -- ah! My first sign of life from "Whitey"!

I'm going to go back into the office and reassemble her and then see what she sounds like. I know this is a low-end guitar, but its given me a bit of a challenge and something to look forward to working on. Next I suppose I'll see about giving her my own lower-tech-than-most setups. I'm looking forward to seeing how it sounds. More to come -- and hopefully soon.