Filling a Cabronita shaped hole on the cheap...

[JayGee]

The continued absence of a Cabronita causes me pain, sadly finances dictate that even the Mexican version is out of reach for the moment. However...

There's a Yamaha Pacifica SD120 sitting in the corner of the office, for those not familiar this is a Telecasteresque design with twin direct mounted humbuckers. Apart from doing duty getting both my kids through their first few months of learning it's largely neglected. In a bout of enthusiasm I ripped the pickups and electrics out of it and replaced them with a Seymour Duncan SH-1 '59 wired straight to the jack socket through the volume control - this captured my interest for a while but it hasn't really earned a place on my frequently used list...

So here's the 3 step plan...

Step 1: Obtain one of Guitarweasel's Cowtron pickups, screw it in and wire it up - current plan is that the tone control and a three way switch get re-instated wired to give me a choice between flat out straight to the jack socket ("blower" switch style), volume and tone active, and, err.... something else - easy option would be mute but there again I could go for an Esquire style preset rhythm voicing. Spend ages mucking around with cardboard to come up with a template for a scratchplate design to hide the hole where the neck pickup isn't. Play...

Step 2: Watch for a nice, bargain priced, vintage style neck - there's nothing actually wrong with the Yamaha neck but it's much slimmer than I prefer with a very flat fingerboard radius - a nice handful with a 9.5" radius will suit both myself and the general vibe I'm aiming for far better. I've checked the dimensions and as far as I can tell a standard Fender format neck should fit OK... Fit, possibly replace bridge with something like a cut-down 3 saddle job. Play...

Step 3: Watch out for a nice bargain price "proper" Tele body (might need to get bridge pickup cavity re-routed and a bridge with a humbucker baseplate). Transplant neck, electrics, and sundry other bits from Yamaha. Play some more...

OK - it's not going to be a Cabronita as such but it should get me into the sonic ballpark and it might be fun to do...

Sound like a sensible plan? Am I missing something vital?

[TheGuitarWeasel]

As nobody else seems to have dived in ... my thoughts.
Ultimately how cheap it will be compared to buying a Mex Cabronita is I suppose a mute point. My pickup is £59 quid a TVJones is around £100. If you want to go on to ultimately build something that looks completely like a 'Cab' then saving the extra for a TV Jones would be the way to go ... then extend your scratchplate back to fill the mounting gap in the bucker rout and you are armed to go forward, changing bits as you can afford them till you have a proper Cabronita. My pickup sounds as close as I can get to a Gretsch FilterTron of the fifties ... but the brief was always to design something that sounded like a FilterTron ... and looked a bit like one ... in a simple to fit humbucker package. It is mostly for people who have humbucker equipped guitars who want a versatile way of getting 'that' sound ... but a replica it ain't! Granted I have been planning a few months down the line to produce a full on Tron replica ... correct size etc ... but that's a way down the pipline with my work load at the moment.
So if you accept the Cow-T-Ron for what it is ... great ... but I never want people to be disappointed in my products.
Oh, my business partner Tim has a Yammi SD 120 Tele at home ... really nice guitar actually.