I am having trouble getting my pickguard to lay flat.
It's perfect everywhere except between the bridge pup and the bridge itself. It is raised a tad.
I'm stumped.
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I am having trouble getting my pickguard to lay flat.
It's perfect everywhere except between the bridge pup and the bridge itself. It is raised a tad.
I'm stumped.
Is it a single layer guard on a Strat? The often do that.
Would that indicate that a screw hole might be a bit misplaced? Maybe plug and re-drill?
Also - pickguards are cheap. Replacing it might be the easiest solution.
It's a single ply pickguard on my Eric Johnson Strat.
Can EJ tell the sonic difference between warped and flat pickguards? :couch
He likes 'em warped, but just a little.
I'm with Don: those single ply guards are going to warp and buckle. (Is that why they went to the 3-ply guards?) And with Curtis: I'd just replace it.
They don't all warp. My parchment one on my Am Series strat is flat. But it might have the 11 screw pattern designed to keep stuff flat.
On my part-o-caster I have a single ply pickguard that Warmoth made. It's thicker material than typical single ply.
If it's warped, it's warped. You might be able to flatten it with a warm iron.
If it's due to the pickguard holes being off, you should notice it being hard to allign w/the holes in the body.
If it will lay flat without any screws in place, or w/some of the srews (near the raised part) removed or loosened, you might be able to enlarge a couple of holes (not the countersinks) and reduce the kink that's causing the hump.
If it's a EJ design feature spec'd by EJ himself, for superior resonance :wah: , listen more carefully.
It probably sounds better than having a piece of plastic screwed tight to the "breathing" wood. :D
There's always double-stick tape, too.
I tried double stick tape on my '57 and it didn't work very well. It would tack down for moments at a time and then pop back up.
I decided that it was the nature of the beast and left it alone.
Yeah. "Tone-robbing" double-stick tape. :wah:
:D
This phenomena is not exclusive to single layer 'pickguards' or 'scratchplates' as they call 'em here... I've been fooking around with 'electric guitars' for nearly 40 yrs... lot's of 'stuff' causes this... not enough clearance under the pickup routing and poor consideration of where the wires need to go... like others have mentioned... screw hole positioning... how about this one... thermal cycling... it doesn't mean jack... I just watched a vid of Elliott Randall playing the same Strat he's been using for years with a smile on his face... do you think he'd be worried about a little bit of buckling in his pickguard if he's still getting what he wanted out of it?... sorry...:stan:... but this thread - for me - is offset by an observation of a really, really nice guy (ER) who continues to get on (yup - with that same Strat with a H/B in the neck)... the proliferation of 'what is my guitar gonna be worth in time' taking over the enjoyment of owning, playing, maintaining and 'fooking around with' an instrument has gone on for toooooo long....:D :D :D
Wow. Thanks for setting us straight.
and you missed an opportunity to correct my grammar... it's phenomenon in the singular.... :D