Yamaha ERG 121 mods!

This is a classic Yamaha Erg-121 guitar model. I bought it used a few months ago as a guitar project. It's made in Indonesia and it's part of Yamaha's "Pacifica" series. It's got some interesting features and a few odd ones.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/yamaha_electric_guitars.html?partner_id=73786

Here are the stock erg-121 specs:
Body: Agathis
Neck: Bolt-on maple
Fingerboard: Sonokeling, 350mm (13.75") radius
Frets: 22
Scale length: 648mm (25.5")
Pickups: One single coil, two humbuckers
Controls: Five-position pickup selector, master volume, master tone
Bridge: Vintage-type vibrato
Finish: Black

The Pacificas are some of the most popular guitars amongst guitar students and there are many of these sitting on stands in various studios around the world. So, why is it that we don't hear a lot about these Yamaha models?

Well, these guitars are playable but they do have a weird mixture of vintage and modern specs. For instance, the neck has 22 frets, a nice C-shape profile and a 13.75" radius but you can't really get a very low string action. The fretwork is to blame for this one.
Also, the stock tuners are bad, really bad. Once the strings were removed, some of the tuners just fell apart... Then, there's the tremolo system. These vintage "S" style saddles are just weird and the strings keep going out of tune with even a slight trem-arm movement. I've used quite a few Strat guitars with vintage saddles and none of them was so hard to adjust. Also, their price is almost two times higher than the Squier bullet series models which are the "original" entry-level Strat copies. The Pacifica kind-of-strat body shape doesn't really help either.

Mods!

Before pics:




Therefore, I decided to modify this ERG guitar in order to get rid of all the weird stuff and unleash its full potential.
 At first, the old strings and tuners were removed. The tuner holes of the headstock were drilled a bit larger and a new set of closed type black tuners was fitted in. The new tuners are simple Chinese-made tuners I found on Ebay for 10$ but they function way better than the stock semi-open ones.



The stock plastic nut was replaced with a graphite one for better tuning stability. The old bridge was replaced with a brand new black 6-point tremolo from Sung IL. This is a much better tremolo assembly. It's cheap, easy to adjust, easy to use and it stays in tune! Its saddles are not the vintage S style.


The frets were leveled, crowned and polished in order to get a lower string action and perfect intonation.

Then, all the electronics were replaced. New 500K Alpha volume and tone pots were installed plus a new 5-way selector (the old plastic one was worn out). Then, a set of used Dean ceramic black pickups replaced the old no-name medium output H-S-H pickups.



The final touches were two new metallic dome knobs, a  plastic back-plate and a new output jack-plate.

The guitar is now all-black, it looks modern and most importantly, it's way more playable. Gone is the awful "vintage" hardware. The tone is now great and you can actually get all kinds of sounds out of the H-S-H pickup configuration via the 5-way selector.









-Thanos