This is how the guitar looks like when I first got it. It was a birthday present from Mom. (Thank you Mom!) My 16th birthday, year 2000. 3 single coils, a 5-way switch, plain white single ply pickguard, 21 frets, vintage bridge. The body is alder and it has a maple neck with rosewood finger board. No tremolo arm!
The second version of Liquid! I stuck an Offspring logo below the bridge, a 'no lies' sticker on the pickguard, a warning sign on the jack plate and circular beware signs on each knob! Oh, I also got a tremolo arm installed! Alomost forgot, I changed the string trees too!!
This version of Liquid is quite special because of some cool changes. First, I replaced the 'no lies' sticker with a Pennywise logo, put a NOFX sticker between the neck and middle pickup and also included a 'Punk Band' sticker on the pickguard. And the coolest part of this version is a gold pick holder placed at the lower horn of the guitar as well as replacing the white plastic knobs with shiny chrome knobs! Wow! Talk about class!!
In the 4th version of Liquid, I opted a 'classy' look instead of the previous 'punk' look. That's why all stickers except for the warning sign on the jack plate is removed. I removed one of the string trees because it kept getting the D & G strings out of tune. The gold pick holder is replaced with a chrome one for a better match with the overall colour scheme. The pickup selector switch now has a black handle intead of a white one to make it stand out. You'll notice that the tremolo arm isn't there anymore. That's because after seeing Joe Satriani do that famous guitar scream of his, I have been doing some extreme whammy bar techniques in order to copy him. Yes, I succeeded, but the guitar almost fell apart afterwards! The bridge was moving so much that it pryed loose the six srews that held the bridge down! So I decided no more whammy bar craziness on a vintage bridge! I filled the damaged screw holes with wood fill and drilled in new holes, then srewed the bridge down tight and put on 5 springs to hold it down. I then wrapped velcro on the springs to stop spring vibration and to improve tone. It now acts like a fixed bridge guitar, which I prefer more because of its tuning stability and tone. So this is the guitar after surgery!!
This is the latest version of Liquid. I have been planning for this custom look for a long long time. I finally got enough money and found the parts and followed my blue prints to create Liquid--version 5. I decided to work on tone and looks, so I have a pearl white 4-ply pickguard with 2 humbuckers! The bridge is a Seymour Duncan Distortion Humbucker and the neck is a Seymour Duncan Jazz Model. I also designed the circuit myself and did all the wirings myself. There is a 3-way switch, a volume knob for both humbuckers and a tone pot for each pickup. The results? 1) Tone: I can switch from heavy distortion sounds to clear jazz runs or a blend of the two with a flick of the switch. Then control the tone of each pickup and finally set a mood with the volume knob. 2) Looks: Cool baltic blue with shiny pearl white pickguard and chrome hardware with natural wood colours on the neck. Conclusion: The ultimate class of tone and looks!!! No lies! This guitar is versatile in terms of tone and it looks so cool too!
Future plans for Liquid: I have an updated plan for Liquid! I've decided to enhance Liquid's tonal capabilities, so I'm going to install a push/pull pot for coil splits!! Yup! After looking at some circuit diagrams, wiring a coil split doesn't seem too hard at all! I already have a push/pull pot ready for installation. After that, Liquid will have the ability to sound like a guitar with humbuckers AND single coils! Other than that, I also have a Fender neck plate that is waiting to replace the Squier neck plate! The strap button at the bottom is coming loose, so I will have to fix that. I have just purchased a set of Fender tuning pegs! You can bet that they'll be installed on Liquid! Other than that, I'm trying very hard to land myself an authentic Fender neck! This way, I will have a new nut, a wider nut width and I will be able to install my LSR roller nut on Liquid!! Wait for the good news~
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