Washburn OE 30 Delta King Project

Given an upgrade worthy guitar such as the OE-30, new pickups make a new guitar.

Replace wiring, pots (500K Audio) and caps (,047uf). Replace OEM pickups with  Seymour Duncan SH-2n Jazz Model and SH-4 JB Model.

The "ship in a bottle technique"  is applied on the OE30 or to any other semi-hollow body guitar lacking a rear control port. Simply put: all pots, jacks and switches are pulled into place using a wire snake technique. The control harness is built on the outside of the guitar and slipped through the "F" hole on the guitar.

First gut the guitar of parts to be replaced. On this guitar, the stock pickups were OK.. but not great. In addition the OEM electronics included mini-pots and all shielded wiring. I replaced the OEM pots with standard size pots. The schematic used for this project was provided by Semour Duncan for: 2 Volume, 2 Tone, 3-way switch with split bridge. I left off the split bridge pickup for two reasons. First I wasn't interested in a thin sound produced by this configuration and second, I would have had to drill a hole in the guitar body for a switch that would be used to control the split/normal function.

Why Seymour Duncan? Consistently good tone. My target tone was mellow and jazzy in nature. This lead me to the SH-2n for the neck and the SH-4JB for the bridge.

Below are a couple of photos I took during the upgrade. Up grade time was 6 hours due to the method used to fish the controls into the cavity.

  OE 30 - gutted

   New wiring harness complete with pots and caps. In addition, all pots are cross grounded.

New pickups with bezels installed

Completed guitar. In addition, a nice fret polishing using X-treem and fret templates.

Does it sound good? You bet!