low down on upgrades

Getting a new guitar is fun, and for many of us a great lubricant in the creative process when you feel like you are out of ideas or just in a rut.  Getting a new guitar isn't, for many of us, the most responsible thing to do on a regular basis.  Upgrades on the other hand aren't quite so hard on the pocketbook and have the same end result.  

Bone nut and saddle.
Upgrading the string nut from plastic to bone on any guitar that doesn't have a vibrato is a pretty significant upgrade in terms of the liveliness and sustain of open strings and upgrading the saddle on an acoustic guitar does the same thing for fretted notes. It just sounds better and the energy of the vibrating string transfers to the wood of the guitar in a much more efficient way. It is fairly time consuming for a luthier to cut a bone nut so expect a few hours of labor and the cost of materials. String nuts are not, as it crazy as this is to comprehend for some people, a replacement part.  They are individually fitted and adjusted to each guitar by hand and have a significant effect on both the action and intonation of an instrument.

Tone Capacitor.
Upgrading the electronics of an electric guitar is one of my favorite ways to make people fall back in love with an instrument that they were bored with.  
Upgrading the tone pot circuit is probably the cheapest and most overlooked mod you can do.  Most people never touch the tone knob on their guitar because it just sounds like mud.  By removing that capacitor (that cost the manufacturer $00.005)  and swapping it out with a higher quality replacement you can actually roll off some treble without turning your guitar sound into murk.  Higher quality doesn't necessarily mean the $20-$60 reproductions of the '50's blahblahblah... The Sprague orange drop caps that cost a couple of bucks make a massive difference.  If you think about it, a couple of bucks is a lot of money compared to half a penny.  Well worth it, and you can experiment with values too, personally i always like a lower value cap than what is standard.  Lower values roll off at a higher frequency.  I find this is good for getting a little bit of snot when overdriven but does not do the thumpy palm muted thing as well.  

New Pickups.
This is the biggest sonic upgrade you can make in my opinion and will require another full blog entry to scratch the surface.  In a nut shell, replacing the pickups in your guitar is not that far off from getting a new guitar. Pickups are inherently expensive and time consuming to make and at some point  (maybe in the early '70's?)  most major guitar manufacturers just gave up on spending that money and stopped caring.  Now in the age of super cheap magnets and cnc machines, stock pickups are overwhelmingly really bad.  A set of pickups from a hand-made/boutique winder will blow your mind if you've never had them before and make your guitar sound a lot closer to the guitar tones that you hear on old records that you've always found elusive. I'd always rather have a cheaper guitar with expensive pickups than an expensive guitar with mass produced pickups. 

Setup.
Simple enough, guitars are wooden and they move with the weather.  They need to be set up, and a really good set up will make your guitar play better and sound more in tune with your band or recordings than it ever has before.  
When you pick up a guitar that you really fall in love with, it is well set up.  See if you can't get your tech to adjust the one you already have to play as well as it can and see how close it comes.  You'll be surprised.
Compared to the upkeep involved with pianos or violins, having a guitar setup twice a year is very inexpensive.

There are a bunch of other nerdy little tweaks that can be done to make the guitar you already have into a much better instrument.   Think about what it is that you like about your dream guitar and what it is that you dislike about your current instrument and hit me up, I'll see if i can point you in the right direction.  

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