The Beginning
I was thinking a lot about whether such a blog would have any point. I am not a luthier, nor a musician, just an enthusiast with a limited amount of free time that I try to split among a thousand interests. The reason why I have decided to jump into that after all is to show the path how someone with limited initial knowledge can learn the “basics” and deal with the difficulties of upgrading a guitar that is hated and loved at the same time.
The internet nowadays allows us to gain material unbelievably quickly gain material for any topics but the experience is something that cannot be learned from books and videos. To make things crystal clear: I wouldn’t like to claim that by the end, I will consider myself a luthier on any level. I intend to have some fun, gain new skills and knowledge in something I really like.
Before we start, I would like to ensure that it’s kept in mind that the process sometimes might be insecure. If you would like to try something based on the series, do it for your own growth, accepting the risk that may come with it, like unintentionally damaging the instrument.
Upgrade, are you sure?
I was considering buying a new guitar many times before, but in the end, my thoughts always led to the same conclusion - “I’m not good enough to buy a new one yet“. On the other hand, my existing electric beast, the SX SEG1-STD has some flaws that make the experience of playing slightly mixed:
some buzzing
low sustain
somewhat noisy and weak pickups
a bridge that won’t behave and wouldn’t really like me to downtune
Due to the inconveniences, I decided to utilise one of my other hobbies, tinkering, fixing stuff that lays around, and as a result, here I am, thinking about the process of giving new life to that poor instrument.
Will it be worth it?
Whether it will be worth the effort and the money, I am not quite sure yet, but the knowledge I will gain by the end is already good enough for me.
The main goal is to spend as few bucks during the process as possible. To keep that goal, I plan to order most of the necessary parts directly from the Far East after the proper investigation is done. It does pose some risk however my experience so far (in other areas/hobbies) is that if you did your homework by doing some research on what will you order exactly then the risk is fairly low (or maybe I was lucky so far), and … anyway, SX is a chinese brand so I am just getting some hardware for it from its homeland.
About SX (Essex) brand
“Rondo history with guitars began in early 1960s. It’s just another story of the great manufacturing industry migration. When guitar manufacture migrated from the States to Japan, then to Korea, then toTaiwan, we got the chance to found a guitar factory inTaiwan, making guitars for many prestige brands around the world. The factory soon became the biggest guitar factory inTaiwan and also became the cradle of numerous Taiwanese guitar makers (who learned how to make good guitars when they were employees of the company). During that period, we learned how to make good guitars and also built up knowledge for the guitar culture. In the 1990s, when making guitars in Taiwan became cost prohibited, we established a new company, Team International Music Co., Ltd. It started as a distribution company, exclusively distributing many world famous brands (including Martin, Gibson and may others) inTaiwan till end of 2009. In 1994, we sensed the great potential for musical instrument business in China and we formed Team China with several friends to venture into the surging Chinese market. Team China at that time was only a trading company and it aimed at offering sourcing, quality control and shipping service for other western companies. With the advantages of more than 30 years successful guitar manufacturing experience and our profound understanding of the Chinese culture, Team China instantly became an enormous success. Our customers included many of those top guitar brands nowadays. At that time we also tried to sell guitars with our only brand name. Sometimes we still got consumers sending pictures of guitars with Team logo, asking about info of the guitars like production date, prices, etc, etc. It is always so funny and heart warming to see those old guitars we made. However, Team is the company name, really not a suitable name on a guitar. So in 1998, we decided to launch a new brand. One of the shareholders of Team China, Kevin Hague from Australasian Music Supplies Pty. Ltd, the No. 1 music distributor and wholesaler in Australia by volume sales, came up with the name Essex. Without a second’s hesitation, the name was decided. To our surprise, soon after we released the products to the market, we discovered Steinway and Sons had registered Essexfor a new line of pianos almost at the same time. Then Essex was abbreviated and thus SX was born. Within very short time, SX had become extremely popular as being the best valued guitar on the market, with unbeatable quality for the money. In 2003, we stopped taking OEM orders to focus on SX. Again in 2009, closed distribution business inTaiwan put all resources on the fast growing SX business.“ (Source at References)
The guitar to be upgraded
My precious and slightly cursed guitar, which I’m going to upgrade is an SX SEG1-STD. A superstrat form factor with the HSH pickup layout, featuring a questionable quality licensed floyd rose tremolo and low-quality pickups. There is nothing really special about that guitar, nor does it have unimaginable sentimental value for me. It’s really only the fact that I “believe“ that it can be better, probably much better than how it is now.
Specs of the guitar
24 Jumbo frets
(that will need some love here and there)Dual cutaway solid Alder body
Bolt on Maple neck with bound Rosewood fretboard and adjustable truss rod
5-way pickup selector switch and one volume and one tone control
(that will be swapped to something cheap but probably higher quality with some additional feature ;) I will describe that in another blog post)Licensed Floyd Rose locking tremolo system
(also subject of the planned upgrade to give it a bit more sustain and stability)All black hardware, including diecast machines
(maybe not a surprise by now, but… well the color will most probably remain)Width of the neck at the nut: 1 5/8"; at the 24th fret: 2 3/16"
Neck Profile (thickness) 13/16" at the first fret. 2 1/4" at the 22nd fret
Overall length, including the strap button: 39 1/2"; Scale length: 25.5"
Width at the widest point: 12"
Body thickness 1 5/8" at edge
Actual Weight is only 3,8 Kg (7 lbs) (My measurement is 3,26 Kg)
What upgrades do I plan? Many, probably too much and some of them might not be reasonable after all:
New pickups
Improve the overall sound quality of the guitar. The existing pickups are noisy and lack depth. They also seem to have fairly low gain.New electronics (knobs, switch, etc.)
I would like to match the new pickups with some okayish quality of electronics to reduce the noise. I also plan to introduce an additional feature, but I wouldn’t like to reveal it yet.Tuners (locking ones… yes for a floyd rose. I warned you that there might be some irrational ones…)
One of the tuners seems to be faulty. That’s one reasonable reason I could mention, and as I found a cheap locking set online, I gave it a chance. Will see how it turns out.Brass tremolo bridge block
Sustain is not the strongest point of my axe, however, I feel that it’s something I can improve. The current tremolo block looks to be light and cheap therefore, swapping it to a brass one should help.Tremolo stabilizer
I would like to downtune the guitar occasionally without having to retune all the strings. Also when I do some bends I would like to avoid other strings changing pitch and it seems to be providing a solution for that.EMI shielding of the electronics cavities
I did some research on that topic and after all its not a great investment. My expectation is to further reduce the noise of the guitar. I am not sure if I can make it dead silent but I will figure it out.New strings (that one might be obvious)
I’m also somewhat afraid that I won’t be able to avoid some fretwork, but that will be something I will have to be extremely careful with. Cleaning and oiling up (moisturising) the fingerboard also seems to be a must as I’m looking at the photo above.
Final words
I hope the idea sounds fun and somewhat interesting, if so, then follow the blog for the new posts and get notified about the latest disaster that might happen during the next step.
Plans for that series
I made an attempt to create realistic plans regarding that blog, here they are:
New post every 2 weeks (depending on the carrier services and my availability).
Describing the what, how and why during the process by researching the necessary information and sharing my experience I gain during the process.
I plan to describe and share my impression of the products I am upgrading my guitar with.
References
History of SX
https://www.guitar-list.com/brands/sx
SX SEG1-STD
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