Topic: Guitar Modification Opinions Sought

I’m the pleased new owner of an Epiphone Sheraton II (Vintage Sunburst) & a Fender Super Champ XD. It’s difficult to research the Sheraton without seeing many references to modifying it anywhere between one-new-pickup & nothing-original-but-the-wood. It’s a popular model for that.

I imagine I’ll at least consider modifications at some point, once I know the guitar better. New tubes for the amp & so forth, in a spirit of bringing out potential. To that end, here are a few beginner’s questions. It seems more economical to ask all at once rather than create several new topics:

== Many mention the Sheraton’s hardware’s gold finish fading out, rubbing off. They vow to install nickel or chrome pieces. To me, unless it starts looking really funky --- I mean “funky” in a bad way, you understand, & “bad” in a, well, bad way --- or my arm turns green, that rubbed-out gold is just the distressed relic look some pay lots for in other circumstances.

Likewise, I’d keep the orange jello top hat knobs, etc. Everything visually as original as possible, soup it up on the inside. This brings me to consider pickup covers. Suppose I install the popular combination of Gibson ’57 Classic neck & Classic Plus bridge. Would the Sheraton’s original gold covers be likely to fit over them? I’m hoping pickups, especially maybe cousins like Gibson & Epiphone, are all of similar enough sizes to keep the original pieces as well as save $35 to apply elsewhere on the project. 

== I’ve installed Tusq nut, saddle & bridge pins on my acoustic guitar with good results. I see GraphTech sells not only nuts specifically for Epiphones, but sets of six saddles for Tune-O-Matic bridges as well. Has anyone tried them?

== It would probably be best to do it all at once, but are there any dire arguments against splitting up the work between an electronics phase & a hardware phase?

== Am I forgetting anything? Pickups, pots, pickup switch, amp jack, electrical harness; tuners, nut & saddles, bridge, tail, pickup covers, strap knobs. I hope to leave the frets alone!

== Most people would probably say the one modification they’d make, if nothing else, would be installing new pickups. What is the one modification you would not make, if you had to eliminate one?

== Where can I get a really narrow muthrapurl-block-&-abalone-triangle inlay to fit between the sixteenth & seventeenth frets? That extra dark space on the neck drives me nuts. Just kidding.

Thank you all in advance!

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