10 ESSENTIAL Mods That Will TRANSFORM Your Guitar!

Knowing which mods are worth your money can be tricky! Here are some of my favorite mods that boost performance, playability, and tone!
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[DarrellBraunGuitar]

Are there any mods you guys like to do to your guitars? let me know in the comment section ⬇️!
Enjoy!
*Please report the @telegram scammers if they show up in the comments section*

[blainethemono]

Steve Vai: "three and a half necks, a quarter of a pickup and a tamborine"

[thrivesuffer]

I'm gonna add dress your fret ends for import guitars often the wood acclimates after assembly so the frets need a touch up on the edges. And before you sink any money, dont skip the usual TLC, tighten your tuner mounts, adjust your tuner tension, change your strings, adjust your truss rod, set your string height, intonate your bridge.

[joshuaandtheruins]

Weird and fun mods that I like to do personally: (1) spray-adhesive and tin-foil shielding trick under the pickguard. (2) putting 500k pots in a single-coil for insane highs (3) series/parallel mini-toggle or blending knobs for reverse wire center pickups, to make single-coils play like wide humbuckers (4) rounding fret ends so they don't steakknife my hands.

[muttenmagroo]

I bought a cheap Squier Bullet Strat for $60 and threw some upgrades at it. Locking tuners, cts pots, brass trem block, some weird named switch fender uses(I can't remember that name starts with B G?) And some $40 hand wound pickups that have very similar specs to the fender CS 60/63. New strings, oiled up the fret board and rounded the frets. It was a lot of work, but this plays incredible for a <$250 guitar.

You don't need to spend a lot to get a great guitar now a days as long as you don't mind a little work.

[rfcnyc]

Another mod I regularly use on all my guitars is the Analysis Plus Qijack output jack. It's a super-heavy-duty jack that provides a much better connection and where the (subtle but audible) before/after differences can be heard on several YouTube clips. In situations where space does not permit the use of the Qijack, I use the Pure Tone multi-point-contact jack.

[jonathanrupolo]

Thank you Darrell, i think you’re a great teacher. Very informative and you explain things so well. Great video!

[AnimalJohn]

A proper cut bone nut and a set of graphtec saddles transformed my Les Paul, not only does it play better but the stability is incredible.
Other great mod there (that granted my local luthier did on the Gibson) is rolling the edges of the fretboard, absolute night n day feeling, have since done it on most of my other geetars myself. Very rewarding job once done.
Good stuff as always sir.

[RByrne]

Great tips! Ine good thing is that on gloss necks, just using some 0000 steel wool or 1200 sandpaper to give it a satin finish doesn't remove all the gloss, it just roughs it up. So In most cases it's totally reversible by using 2k+ sandpaper and then buff/polish.

[grishnak]

Make sure to check the break angle of your B and E strings without the string tree before you buy staggered tuners. Remember that even with staggered tuners, the angle might not be enough. I recommend that you first get a cheap string set, remove the string tree, wind the full length of the B and E string onto the tuner posts. Get them as far down as possible, just a little bit above the nut of the tuner. Then play the string to see if it sounds good and, if so, you can get the staggered tuners. You'd be disappointed if you got staggered tuners and still have to use a string tree.

Also be careful if you're sanding your guitar neck. If you go to far, it might ruin the neck.

[SkipRides]

Excellent video! I have been watching for a while and you usually have some good stuff to say. Thank you!

[BenjaminGonzalez-wvcy]

Like always Darrell, you never disappoint! Thank you for a great presentation!

[dmanguitar]

Nice video Darrell! These are all solid mods. 👍

[Pikatrainer]

I recently finished my first project guitar! I bought a squire and replaced the nut, string trees, pickguard for an HSH to put in a humbucker, single, p90 (in humbucker package), as well as replacing all the other hardware. Replaced one of the tone pots with a bypass switch and added a kill switch. It sounds amazing and is so much fun to play!

[moskitoh]

I somehow missed my first mod: Change the strings!
Regarding the PUs: If you have a high resonance frequency (typical with low output PUs) you can put a capacity in parallel to the PU to lower resonance frequency.
As there is no mod to heigthen resonance frequency, I always prefer buying guitars with high resonance frequency, and than mod, when needed.

[bldallas]

Great stuff. My daily player is a Squire 60s Vibe Strat in Lake Placid Blue. My wife bought it for me for Fathers Day 2021. I loved it immediately, but over the next few months, decided to do some upgrades:

- Gotoh Vintage Locking Tuners
- Modern string tree
- Highwood vintage Strat saddles with recessed height adjust screws
- Big solid brass trem block
- Fender Tex-Mex prewired pickguard and pups
- Heavy duty input jack
- Shorter trem arm with Fender trem spring

And throughout these steps I continued to improve all the setup items, I mentioned above.

Totaled up, I likely spent about $330 on the upgraded parts, but man was it worth it.

My Squire Strat now plays, feels and sounds as great as a $1200 American Fender. It always stays in tune, too. Great stuff.

[mrax]

I usually sand the finish off of most of my Maple necks. One time I took a Strat and sanded down the entire back of the guitar, re-shaping it. It feels amazing. I've had people to ask me to do it for them. I used Tung oil while doing it. I've also applied Tung oil to necks I've stripped. I've swapped bridges, too - which makes a real difference sometimes.

[faustinofelix]

On the strap buttons, I always go with strap locks. I put them on all my guitars

[rickycompton]

Great video Darrell, this video is a must see especially for tuning stability I usually put locking tuners on all my electric guitars and change out the cheap stamped saddles on a strat or tele I love the Highwood saddles for a strat and graphtec for a tele or Les Paul.

[jackstow]

Great video! Something I've started changing is string type, brand, etc. This can make a big difference in playability I think.