Gorgeous looking hollow body guitar. Really not sure I should be doing this!

Back marked out for hole to be cut to allow access to transplant Variax guts.In this case, I am using a left hand Vax 500 which are going cheap at the moment!

Jeez.....I've really done it now...........

I was surprised at how thick the wood is!

Electrics removed for modifying. I need to free up some holes for the Vax, so I will be sacrificing one set of Volume & Tone controls.

That was the easy part!

Why cant things be straightforward?

I assumed the pillar posts would be a straight swap, but the  Baggs pillar posts are a different size (right) from the guitars one, so I had to improvise making some wooden inserts!

Heres a shot of the inserts in situ. They were easy to make, just another thing I wasnt expecting!

Here we see how the Baggs tune-o-matic bridge fits.

The existing hole for the pickup wires has been enlarged to accept the wires from the piezo elements.

I decided to utilise existing holes rather than cut new holes to run the piezo wires. A small notch had to be cut into pickup surround.

I made this plate to hold the Vax selector switch in the existing F hole so I dont have to cut any slots in the body!

Selector plate held in place by control knob & pickup selector switch.

This is as far as I can get without the Vax. Tomorrow I will start disassembling a 500 lefty & the transplantation process will begin!

Forging ahead here, I've transferred a tracing of the 500 socket outline to the hollowbody. Will cut this out with my Dremmel as its only thin.

Nice to have a large flat surface to work with! 

 Usually struggling with the body edge contours!

The main output wire to the jack socket. This needs to be split & fitted with a toggle switch to allow switching between the Vax & pups.

The toggle will be fitted onto the plate made to cover the inside of the F-hole.

The pickup wiring is all done. Just need to connect up the Vax side of things. Here are the wires coming from the piezo elements. Each wire was marked with black dots to denote which saddle it comes from.

How am I going to fit this??

Things are tight with the 500 loom & I dont really want to extend any wires. I decided to fit the motherboard onto the backing plate cover with some stands-offs. I will tuck the ribbon cable inside, but need to prepare it first!

I decided to mount the bridge-plate section of the cable onto some veroboard with double sided adhesive tape. It will give me a stable earthing point as well as taking the strain off the cable.

Here we have soldered each piezo saddle wire to its correct position on the ribbon cable. Each cable shield has been soldered to the board & all summed up with a common ground wire. Note the ground on the ribbon cable has been included (green/black wire)

The rear of the veroboard is fitted with the magnetic chokes & the cable routed thru them. A spacer of the same thickness is used on the other side so the whole assembly can be secured inside the body cavity. Double sided foam adhesive strip is used.

Here is the final position up against the block of wood that runs thru the middle of the body.

I have fitted 2cm standoffs to the board. Need to make backplate next!

I use 3/8" MDF (medium density fiberboard) as a template. The plastic laminate that will form the backplate will be attached to this & run thru the router.

The plastic backplate has been cut & the motherboard fitted with standoffs.

Just waiting for some matching gold knobs to finish her off.

Notice I had to move the 5-way selector switch cos it was fouling F-hole.