Restoring a Schecter Dream Machine Electronics

This week I had the pleasure to work an a Schecter Dream Machine. It is a really lovely hard-tail Strat with gold hardware. I am not sure about the wood (none of the codes that normally identify these) but the neck might be Pau Ferro (“Bolivian rosewood”). I am rather lost with the body, maybe ash that is stained, or Shedua, walnut,… ?? Any help is welcome so use the […]

A/B Comparing Mark Knopfler’s Schecter to my Strat with the mk-guitar.com loaded pickguard

In these videos I am a/b comparing two different guitars side by side: Mark Knopfler’s famous sunburst Schecter Dream Machine Strat and my pink part-o-caster, built from a Japanese Squier body in metallic pink with a nice bird’s eye maple neck I bought on ebay some time ago (actually a noname product), equipped with the loaded Schecter-style pickguard with the F500T pickup replicas, and with a prototype of the coming […]

Why do certain pickups like Stratocaster pick-ups from the 50ies or the Schecter F500T die so often?

A guitar pickup does not contain any moving parts, and for this reason it is generally free of mechanical wear and might work for many decades (maybe even for centuries?). Nevertheless, certain pickup models seem to be prone to die earlier than others. One example are Fender pickups from the 50ies or early 60ies. For this reason you will often see vintage Stratocasters with rewound pickups. The same is true […]

Inside the Schecter F500T pick-up – What is a tapped pick-up?

The Schecter-F400 loaded pickguards normally came with Schecter’s F500T pick-ups. The ‘T’ stands for tapped. So, what is meant with this, what is a tapped pick-up? A normal Strat pick-up consists of six individual magnet pole pieces wrapped by a coil of thin wire. The original Fender design had about 8,000 turns (varying to some extent, the vintage ’54 pick-up was specified to 8,350, while a 1978 Strat pick-up had […]

MK-Guitar.com presents: Loaded Schecter F400-style pickguard

I am proud to announce a brand new product which will be available exclusively on this site in the very near future. For a long time those vintage Schecter pickguards, loaded with the sought-after F500T tapped Schecter pick-ups, have been the ultimate tool to convert your guitar into something similar to the legendary Schecter Dream Machines, or as a start point to build a high-end custom Strat. With those three […]