Ian Harvey said:
I don't suppose you have any experience with pickup covers do you? I'm also keen to get some nickel-plated covers.
Cheers,
Ian
Ian, here's some info on nickel covers you may find interesting. I wanted to change over the chrome hardware on my '84 ALS60 to a more aged look (can you believe this twenty year-old guitar still gleamed like I just brought it home? Maybe some people desire that, but after seeing what Tom Murphy et all can do, I wanted to funk mine up a bit too! Different strokes, right?). Anyway, after much searching, I bought one very nicely aged cover at a guitar show, only to find...that the pole-spacing on my Tokai 57 PAF's were a hair different. I don't think this would be a problem if you have after-market PU's - I'm guessing that the spacing would be pretty much standardized - but if your'e sticking with the stock pickups, you may have a problem.
The solution came at the suggestion of a local guitar tech. I took the covers to an electro-plating company, you know, one that does silverware and trophies and stuff. On examining the covers, they discoverd that they were indeed nickel
under the chrome, so they could just strip the chrome and polish up the nickel. A week later they proudly presented me with a gleaming pair of mirror-like covers (and were horrified when I told them what I was gonna do to them - muriatic acid, sandpaper, etc!). It cost me $20 per cover - not cheap, but I now have a pair that perfectly fits my Tokai PAFs. And the ageing turned out tremendous.
I also picked up an aged nickel lightweight tailpiece and bridge at that guitar show. The TP doesn't have a brand name on it, but it fits over the original Tokai studs - which is a really good thing, because the studs they supplied with it are Standard threads, which will not go into the Metric threaded anchors on the Tokai. So rather than attempt to remove (rip out?!) the original anchors, I just used the existing Tokai posts. They are chrome, but you cannot tell any difference.
Hope this helps some. Any other questions, feel free to ask.