The Job
Cavity routing to fit a Humbucker pickup at the bridge position into this American Fender® Telecaster.

DiMarzio® D-Activator pickup to be fitted into the bridge position.

Loosening the strings and unscrewing the pickguard assembly, bridge plate and control plate.

Control plate to be unsoldered and removed to facilitate further works on the body.

Here's the image of the pickup cavities. Naturally the bridge cavity is not
wide enough for a Humbucker pickup thus a cavity re-routing is required.

A new bridge plate was ordered for this job. We first alligned the string through holes with the
new plate then proceeded to allign the Humbucker drilling template with the bridge plate.

Making out the position of the drilling template.

Double sided tape is applied on the template.

We proceeded to tape the template onto the body directly.

The template is now secured and we can begin routing!

Routing in the works!

Drilling is a very dusty operation... Definitely need a mask! It was so noisy that my ears kept ringing after.

The Humbucker cavity is almost complete!

Further routing was done to fit the pickup screws and base plate of the Humbucker.

The cavity routing is completed!

Fitting the parts back.

However, the pickguard was unable to fit after we installed the new bridge plate.

We trimmed the pickguard to make it fit. Further sanding was then carried out to smoothen the edge.

The pickguard now fits in nicely!

Soldering the control plate back and running ground wire to bridge plate.

The job is almost complete...

After slapping on DR Extra Life Black Beauties™ and setting it up, this Telecaster from Hell is now ready to rock!

Our happy customer, Daniel, with his rockin' guitar!