Sometimes you do a project just because it is going to be f’ing fun.

A purple guitar with a killer solid white Seymour Duncan pickup. It looks cool and it sounds cool.

MSRP on the Squier Sonic Esquire H is only $199. You can pick them up used between $115 and $180. They come in Ultraviolet (this guitar) (let’s just call it purple for the rest of the video), Lime Green, and Arctic White.

The guitar is your basic inexpensive T style fare with modern specs. 25.5 scale, 9.5-inch neck radius, humbucker in bridge, and one tone and one volume control.

It could be so much more…

I dug through my stuff and pulled out a white Seymour Duncan Invader in white. Matching that to a purple body will be just nothing but cool.

I had a set of Graph Tech Ratio tuners that I intended to be used in another project. I wanted to see how well they functioned as direct drop ins on a Squier guitar. The tuners on the Sonic Esquire do not really need to be replaced. I am doing it for two reasons. One to see how close they are as a drop-in replacement and because it just seems like a cool addition to this beast I am creating. Normal tuners just do not seem up to the job.

Lastly, I am creating a new wiring harness that give the guitar push pull coil split capabilities which with this pickup seems like kind of a necessity. With an invader pickup it starts to break up and overdrive at about mid volume. These pickups are just crazy.

The neck is actually pretty good on this guitar. The frets are flat, and the edges are not too rough. Meaning they will not draw blood while playing. The finish on the back of the neck is satin. All in all, a very playable neck.

The body is actually routed for a neck position pickup all the way out to a P90. This guitar would literally be the best inexpensive modding platform if it came with a string through body. The one shortcoming I find is the top loader bridge.

The guitar finished weighs in at 7 lbs. and 3 ounces.

One note about doing this mod. You have to be concerned with the depth of the control cavity when selecting your push pull switch. Also there is a rib in the middle of the cavity so I had to rotate the control cover and as a result just switched the location of the switches. This way the longer push pull switch was not bottoming out on the rib.

When playing through an amp I do not see being able to play a soft ballad using the clean tones in either humbucker or single coil.

Plugged into a Tube Screamer pedal and this purple demon earns its new name – Squier Sonic Boom Esquire with a Big H.

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