I needed to do a bit of modification to make the pickups fit. A little quality time with some sharp chisels is all it takes.

I moved the output jack on the guitar.  I found a cool spot for it and marked the location with the templates I made.  Then I used a drill, some heckin sharp chisels, and a Dremel to make the hole.

The V area where the jack plate will go has a curve and the jack plate is flat.  I’m recessing the plate into the guitar a little bit so it won’t be seen unless you look for it.  That is hard part and requires a lot of fitting.

After the output jack plate is done, I need to drill a loooong hole to connect it to the pickup cavity. This is so I can snake a wire through and get into the control cavity.

This is what the hole looks like.

I decided to get a new set of Invader pickups. They are so nice and shiny and sexy. They shall melt faces. I’m going to mount them with black pickup rings (I think).

I (mostly) finished stripping the paint off the body. I still need to work on the pickup cavities and in the tremolo and control areas, but the majority is done.

The tremolo mostly fits too! I need to fine tune it a little bit, but it works!

I decided to strip the old paint off the guitar. Some of it is like 1/16″ thick. I’m using a heat gun and a scrape and it pops right off.

The original output jack on the guitar is in the lower V part and it sticks kinda straight out. This sucks if you ever wanna play sitting down while plugged in.

More modern guitars and even the new Kramer Vanguard have the output jack in the upper V out of the way. Also, they use a Stratocaster style plate for the jack so the cable comes out at an angle.

I am going to do this. I’ll need to cut a recess in the upper V to inste the cover plate and provide clearance for the jack and wiring. I’ll also need to drill a loooong hole for the wires to connect. Because the tremolo routing is so big, I’ll drill into the bridge pickup cavity and route the wires there.

Wish me luck!

I did the routing for the tremolo. It was a pain in the butt. The bit slipped out of the router at one spot…so I have to fix that. I’ll prolly use Bondo or something. That spot won’t show much anyway.

I’ll see how the tremolo fits next. I think I will need to do some fine tuning and that’s no biggie.

The original tremolo on the Kramer was surface mounted. This is just how it was done back then.

I want to install the new one the modern way. This allows the pitch to be raised as well as lowering. This is accomplished by removing all the wood under the tremolo. The tremolo comes with studs/pivots that are raised. At the end of the day, the tremolo is in the same spot.

Floyd Rose gives a handy dandy measurement for routing the body to fit the tremolo. I recreated the part I need in SketchUp and printed it full size (thanks JoJo!) And taped it to the guitar in the correct position. After that, I used some pieces of straight wood to act as guides for the bearing on my trim router bit.

Next step, wood chips!

The site vintagekramer.com has some old scans of Kramer catalogs. I think the guitar I’m rebuilding is from 1986. The site has scans of the catalogs from 1985. Here is the page that has the Vangaurd on it. According to their site, they discontinued the guitar in 1986.