Hello everyone

Since a month or so I bought a Fender Mexican Stratocaster.
I've been playing it like crazy and decided to replace the white pickguard with a black one.

I'm not unfamiliar with fiddling on guitars or other electonics. I've built speakers, amps (tube and TTL), pedals,... So I thought the replacement of a little bit of plastic would be doable.

I first looked up to be sure and followed some steps. After a succesfull install the pickguard I noticed that the distortion on the guitar is completely gone (yes the volume know on the guitar is all the way to 11). I thought that was because I didn't yet put the pickups at the right height, but after doing so the problem persisted. Absolutely no distortion at all, only clean tones.

Did one of the pickups decide to give up on me? It's the only thing I can imagine happening, even though I went to work extremely carefully.

Also: I knew that the wood stripped easily, and allthough I was so so so carefull I still stripped 2 screwholes of the pickguard, grrr. I read about using a toothpick with some woodglue to fill up the hole up and then rescrewing the screw once it's all dried up.

Hoping someone can help me out,

Dries

if i couldnt get any 'distortion', id be checking my amp first.

pickups dont 'produce' distortion, they overwork an amp/speaker to get the distorted sound. unless the pickups are also now at a much lower volume than they used to be, i doubt theres anything wrong with them.

but certainly, if the guitar is still as loud as normal, make sure your amp works properly. you got another guitar or amp to test it with ?

As was mentioned in another thread recently, the input stage of an amp needs every millivolt coming out of the pups to be able to overdrive and create distortion/breakup in a amp. Now if you're sure the pup height is as it was before the change, then you have issues with the electronics somewhere. Did you solder/unsolder any connections in your switchover? Or possibly have a few strands of a ground connection touching your signal line? Take off the pg and recheck all wiring and placement to make sure nothing is shorting out.


Have you tried another cable or as suggested, another amp?

_________________
-T

"You can't spend what you ain't got, you can't lose what you ain't never had" ~ McKinley Morganfield

Did you replace an unshielded pickguard with a shielded one? The decreased "noise" may be associated with the shielded pickguard.