The Plywood Special

The initial intent was to create a test-bed guitar, somehow to be able to easily exchange pickups --- the whole pickguard assembly intact. As I started winding more of my own pickups, additional pickguards were populated and the collection started growing. Some sets were just to good to tear down, so I kept them.

The Plywood Special also became my favorite gigging guitar ... it is kept in a soft guitar bag that one can sling on your back to carry to gigs. The guitar also serves as my practise guitar. I never had any grand plans of creating the perfect-sounding instrument, it just happened to turn out likeable with reasonable sound, easy playable neck, and amazingly, seem to hold pitch better than some of my better guitars.

The body was cut and routed from a 14-ply Douglas-fir plywood sheet, 1-3/4" thick. The pickup cavity was made as large as possible to house almost anything, leaving sufficient strength to support a fully-tensioned neck. A neck was purchased off eBay, it was reworked, and the headstock refinished with nice-looking tiger-flamed maple veneers. Since the guitar has to withstand quite a bit of abuse from numerous pickguard exchanges, I covered the front and back surfaces with melamine-based laminate, often used for kitchen tops. Not really the best looking stuff, but really tough.

The pickguard fitted on the guitar in the picture has 1950's Vintage Strat style, Seymour Duncan SSL-1 replicas, with a DiMarzio FS-1 replica in the bridge position.

Exchanging the Pickguard

This is how the pickguard is exchanged. A piece of thick paper stock is inserted between the strings and the pickups to prevent the magnets tangling up with the strings. The guitar does not even have to be re-tuned.



PS. Don't try this with your expensive guitar. The Plywood Special's neck sits a tiny bit higher on the deck to help clear better and it has more room for maneuvering.

Pickguard Cavity

Note: each pickguard is fully wired and has a short wire tail ending in a 1/8" miniature jack. This plugs into a female that is wired into the silver jack socket.

A Few Pickguards in the Collection.

All pickups were hand wound according to original specifications.



Top Row:
(A) DiMarzio DP420 replicas (stacked coils),

(B) 1950's vintage Strat,

(D) Dual humbuckers.

Middle Row:
(E) Gibson-style sidewinders,

(F) Seymour Duncan STK-1 replicas,

(G) Dual P90's.

Bottom Row:
(H) Strat-style A52 (A5 magnets on the wounds, A2's on the plain strings),

(I) Mini sidewinders.