This project has been a long time coming. I’ve been dreaming, planning, even plotting how exactly to make this a reality. There are a few (pricey) premade options on the market, but I’ve never been one to pay up for convenience if I can figure it out.

In this post, I will give a brief rundown of what is in the modular guitar field, then I’ll go into what I want to create, and finally will go over what I’m thinking so far as I begin to acquire all the parts I need and come up with first drafts of my design.

Once I begin building I’ll upload updates, problems, and anything I’ve learned along the way in a new post to this category.

A (Brief) Review of Existing Solutions

All prices and information are what I found at the time of writing, and may be different if you follow the links.

The cheapest option I found was from Relish, but at over $700 USD, with pickup mounts available for around $30 (well, $300 for 10 mounts!), it seemed a bit pricier than what I was looking for. Not to mention that I have to either integrate their system into a guitar I built, or be locked into their choice of body shape and design.

Another option I found from one of my favorite guitarists, Justin Johnson. They sell a modular aluminum guitar for $2,500, which is still well above what I’m looking for.

The last existing solution I’ll touch on is from Mike Lyons on their blog Stay Caffeinated. They found an amazing at home solution that’s almost perfect, but the reason I’m looking to put out another solution is simple. Not everybody can access a 3D printer! Without one, the solution falls apart.

What I Want to Create

There are a few features I want in my hot-swappable system that I consider critical:

  1. I mustn’t need to remove screws or solder anything when swapping pickups.
  2. The guitar has to be able to take both single coil and humbucking pickups in any of the slots, without leaving a hole in my guitar’s face.
  3. I need to be able to put at least 2 pickups in and out of phase, regardless of what is in that slot.
  4. One pickup slot (probably bridge or neck) is coil tappable.
  5. Each pickup slot should be able to be turned on and off.
  6. I want to be able to do this all at home, with no fancy tools. Since I’ve seen tons of affordable power drills at Goodwill (where I got mine) I’m planning on that being my most expensive tool which will hopefully be accessible to anybody following this at home!
  7. Last and most importantly, this guitar has to sound GREAT. I don’t want to play something that doesn’t sound like it costs way more than it does, which is why I started remaking guitars in the first place!

And a few features that would be nice, but if they don’t work, that’s ok:

  1. Being able to switch pickup positions without replugging, so if I can control the phase of the neck and “bridge” I want to be able to move the bridge coil to the middle and still control phase.
  2. Being able to switch between series and parallel would be cool, but isn’t a feature I use too regularly on the other guitars I’ve built with it.
  3. Coil splitting and controlling phase for all slots would be a plus.
  4. I want to have the most functionality and control over my tone with the fewest visible switches. While a few is ok, I’ll probably stay away from the seven switch wiring I did on Lys.

What I’m Thinking So Far

With all that in mind, I’m left with a fairly specific list of what this guitar should do. Now all that’s left is how the guitar will manage to do it!

There are a few premade pieces that will help us achieve our goal of full pickup freedom. The first were touched upon in the Stay Caffeinated article, and align with and elaborate upon what I’ve been thinking.

The first piece comes from a site called GuitarFetish, which is by far my favorite wallet-friendly place to find guitar parts. Not only do I love their pickups, but they have a system called Kwikplug which allows guitar builds to be way more modular. I used it in my first build (Lys) to allow the pickups, wiring, and output jack to each be separated and upgraded or modified without needing to worry about removing the whole pickguard (except for the pickups… hence this project!) but more on that in another post.

I thought for a while about trying to create my own connection system, but I really think the simplicity of this is worth using, especially since most of the pickups going in this guitar will likely come pre setup with Kwikplug hardware.

Now, like Mike Lyons from Stay Caffeinated, I’ll be using magnets to hold my pickups in place. But unlike Mike, I have no router and have no intention of dealing with that process to create a stable and secure seat for my pickups. I also have no 3D printer, so I’m going to make my pickup mounts based on humbucker mounting rings I have from a guitar I rebuilt.

This should keep the necessary gear fairly minimal, at least for the pickup section.

I’m planning to make or buy a triple humbucker strat-sized pickguard which will become the face of this design, and will give me much more leeway with how I approach the internal structure.

Like I’ve done with each guitar I’ve made so far, I’m probably going to cut out a metal control plate so I can separately modify and quickly swap the wiring as well. This may require a fancier tool than I have right now, but in the past I’ve done this cutting with some of those huge kitchen scissors, but may end up getting tin snips like these because it’ll make that way easier.

I have a few more ideas about the mounting and beautifying of the guitar’s face, but will get to that in another post!