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'Black on Black' HSS Loaded Pickguard for Strat®

Regular price
$689.00 NZD
Regular price
Sale price
$689.00 NZD

The Ultimate HSS Loaded Pickguard for your Stratocaster

Super Easy, Solder-less Install

  • Obsidian® Custom HSS Gen2 Electronics 7-Way // Gilmour Mod Switching
  • Includes 7-Way Upgrade // Gilmour Mod
  • Tonerider® 'THE OVERWOUND' HSS Pickups
  • Fully Shielded 3 Ply Black Obsidian® Pickguard
  • High Quality Obsidian® Knobs & Pickup Covers (Black)
  • Comprehensive Wiring & Pickup Upgrade

Custom Shop: Built to Order

Fast Build Time: Ships in 2-5 Business Days

Express Shipping Available: DHL Express

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You Design It, We Build It...

'Black on Black' HSS Loaded Pickguard for Strat®

The Ultimate HSS Loaded Pickguard for your Stratocaster

Super Easy, Solder-less Install

  • Obsidian® Custom HSS Gen2 Electronics 7-Way // Gilmour Mod Switching
  • Includes 7-Way Upgrade // Gilmour Mod
  • Tonerider® 'THE OVERWOUND' HSS Pickups
  • Fully Shielded 3 Ply Black Obsidian® Pickguard
  • High Quality Obsidian® Knobs & Pickup Covers (Black)
  • Comprehensive Wiring & Pickup Upgrade

More Info...

The Wiring

Premium HSS Strat Wiring Harness - With 7 Way Upgrade

Our all new 'Gen2' HSS Strat wiring harness incorporates intelligent switching to give you the full clarity of your humbuckers AND tame your single coils, more useable tone and volume controls, greater clarity.

INTELLIGENT SWITCHING

Optimized for humbuckers & single coils. When building an HSS Stratocaster, there is a toss-up between choosing 500k controls to retain the life of a humbucker, or 250k controls to balance brighter single coils.

We use Obsidian® Intelligent Switching to give you the absolute best of both your humbuckers and single coils with a wiring harness that will automatically switch between the two.

AUTO SPLIT

A balanced humbucker & single coil combo. Achieving the right balance between your humbuckers and single coils is an important part of hearing the full dynamics of both pickups together. With Obsidian® auto split, your humbucker automatically splits into singlecoil mode when matched with your other singlecoils on the selector switch.
- Requires split coil compatible humbuckers

CRYSTAL CLEAR TONE

Retain clarity at lower volumes. To make your tone crystal clear at lower volumes we include an Obsidian® Custom spec treble bleed mod. This prevents tone 'muddiness' at low volumes by allowing high frequencies to pass along a separate path to your amp, rather than being stopped short by the increasing resistance at the volume control.

7-WAY SWITCH // GILMOUR MOD - UPGRADE INCLUDED

The sweetest bell like Strat® tone. The Obsidian® 7-Way Switch allows you to play your neck and bridge pickups together for the sweetest bell like tones, or even all three pickups together. The switch is built in to your tone control by use of a push/pull pot, so no extra mods are required to your guitar.

CONTROL LAYOUT

HSS Mode: For Humbucker Bridge Pickup + Two Single Coils

5: Neck (250k)
4: Middle + Neck (250k)
3: Middle (250k)
2: Bridge humbucker in split mode + middle (250k)
1: Bridge humbucker in full mode (500k)

* Diagram includes options Gilmour Mod // Neck pickup 'ON' switch

Tone Controls

Control 1: Master Volume (auto splits 250 for Single coils & 500k for Humbucker)
Control 2: Tone Control 1 (Neck & Middle) 250k No Load Pot & 0.022uf Capacitor
Control 3: Tone Control 2 (Bridge) 500k Pot & 0.022uf Capacitor

The Pickups

THE OVERWOUND HSS Pickup SET TRS3 & AC5

With all three pickups slightly overwound on Alnico V magnets, this set is designed to give a little more push.  Combining our Classic Blues single coils with our new Birmingham AC5 bridge humbucker. This set sizzles!

TRS3N / TRS3M / AC5B-F-spaced

Neck 6.3k / Mid 6.4k / Bridge 8.7k

The Look

Choose your favorite pickguard and knob combo.

Need inspiration?

Check out some of our favorite combos Here

The Install

Solderless Loaded Pickguard Install

Solderless Install

All Obsidian® loaded pickguards allow for a quick and easy solderless install using our own solderless Pro-Wired™ Electronics

Fitting

Loaded Pickguards (for Strat)

Obsidian® loaded pickguards for Stratocaster® are made to fit modern Fender Strat® bodies with 11 hole pickguards perfectly. Other bodies including Squier, import and after market type guitars may need adjustments to routing, or screw hole placement. 

  • Mounting Hole Pattern: Modern Fender 11 hole
  • Control Cavity Routing: Fits genuine Fender Stratocaster
    Other guitars may need adjustment
  • Cavity depth: Minimum 34mm (1.26”)
    7-Way wiring always require full depth cavity around tone controls
  • Pickup Cavity Routing: Check pickup compatibility before ordering. Humbucker loaded pickguards require full size humbucker routing.

Control Plates (for Tele)

Obsidian® loaded control plates for Telecaster® are made to fit modern Fender Tele® bodies perfectly. Other bodies including Squier, import and after market type guitars may need adjustments to routing, or screw hole placement. 

  • Mounting Hole Spacing: 150mm from center to center
  • Control Cavity Routing: Fits genuine Fender Telecaster
    Other guitars may need adjustment
  • Cavity depth: Minimum 34mm (1.26”)
    7-Way wiring always require full depth cavity around tone controls
  • Pickups: ObsidianWire Pro-Wired Electronics are generally made for standard two wire pickups.

    For different wire types select the Custom Universal harness. the Custom 4-Way harness requires a three wire neck pickup, or a solder join to add a new wire.

Control Plates (for Jazz Bass)

Obsidian® loaded control plates for Jazz Bass® are made to fit modern Fender Jazz Bass® bodies perfectly. Other bodies including Squier, import and after market type guitars may need adjustments to routing, or screw hole placement. 

  • Control Cavity Routing: Fits genuine Fender Jazz Bass
    Other guitars may need adjustment - Minimum // width 24mm - length 128mm - depth 30mm
  • Pickups: Electronics are made for standard two wire pickups. Other pickups may require modification or soldering.

The Shipping

ObsidianWire Custom Shop Item:

This item is part of our Custom Shop range, built to order, one at a time in Christchurch New Zealand.

Build Time: 5 - 10 Business Days

We aim to build all custom shop orders within 5 - 10 business days (excludes weekends and public holiday). If we expect any delays we will let you know as soon as possible.

Shipping: Ships direct from Christchurch, New Zealand

All custom shop items ship direct from Christchurch, New Zealand. Please allow extra time for International shipping. Check for additional info on our shipping policies below

Shipping Policies

Customer Reviews

Based on 18 reviews
83%
(15)
11%
(2)
6%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
D
Darin A. (Carnegie, US)
Only one criticism....

First, I want to start by saying I was very impressed with how fast my order made it all the way from NZ! When the package arrived I was very impressed an pleased with how everything was packaged. I love the look and sound of the the loaded pickguard/pickups I went with and overall I am very happy with my purchase. I would definitely purchase from Obsidian Wire again in the future! My only note would be to include item specific instructions for products. I had some trouble with my install when I ended up following the wrong diagram because I'm not technically minded at all, Once I had someone smarter than me point out I was following the wrong diagram, I was able to get everything working perfectly. Product specific instructions would have been helpful in my case.

J
Jeremy, Illinois USA (Heyworth, US)
Excellent Upgrade

I chose Obsidian so I could fix a Strat from my youth that’s been out of commission for 20+yrs. No one could figure out the issue, probably a fried board, so I replaced all the electronics with Obsidian just to save the trial and error headaches. It took some fitting due to my particular model, but Obsidian brought the Strat from my teen years back to life and it sounds much better than it ever did before. ...I should have done this years ago. You will not be disappointed with this upgrade. If I have any other needs like this in the future, I’m going straight to Obsidian first.

j
jason hoey (Atlantic Beach, US)
First time buyer

I am extremely impressed with the product. Plug and play. I will buying again soon. Jason Hoey

I
Ian Fishburn (Brisbane, AU)
Squier Upgrade

Easy install into my old Squier Strat. I will have to get another one for my American Strat now I've heard how good this sounds.

J
Jason L. (Berkeley Heights, US)
Only solderless if soldering was already done.

The quality of the pickups, pots, wiring and pickguard/knobs are all wonderful.

I ran into two things which caused me a bit of a headache.

First, this is designed and marketed as a swap in replacement, not to be put into a new guitar build. As that is what I was doing, the ground wire was not present so I still had to go buy wire to use for a ground and a soldering iron. After buying this specifically so I wouldn’t need to do that, feels like a bit of false advertising that wasn’t clear when I was buying.

Second, much less annoying but still something that caused my install to take days instead of minutes, was that the kit does not come with pickguard screws. Not an issue when you’re replacing an existing setup, but does not help for a new build.

Hi Jason - thanks for the feedback on this! Really appreciate it. We have made some changes to the product page to make it clearer for future.
Cheers,
Caitlin

Pro-Wired™ Pickguards & Control Plates

  • Solderless Install

    Quick & Easy install using with Obsidian® solderless wiring

  • Custom Built

    You choose the specs, and we build it for you, right here in our Custom Shop.

  • Pro-Grade

    World class components and build quality for world class tone and durability