Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus custom Pickguards!
Pop-punk has been having a renaissance lately, and with the release of new Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus signature basses and an eagerly-anticipated new Blink-182 album due in October ’23 it’s clear that early-00’s nostalgia is in full swing, two decades later!
Over here at Tiny Tone however we’ve always had Tom LeLonge Strat guards in our order books, proving once and for all that for large swathes of the guitar community, it was never ‘just a phase’…
Indeed, used prices on both the Mark Hoppus P Bass and Tom DeLonge Strat signature guitars have remained high, and any limited edition runs have sold out rapidly in the time since their heyday at the turn of the new millennium.
So what makes these guitars and basses special?
Arguably it’s all down to the pickguards.
Tom DeLonge’s signature Stratocasters and Mark Hoppus’s signature Jazz and Jaguar basses all feature the same stripped-back design:
-4-ply pearl white material
-1x high-output pickup (often a Seymour Duncan Invader)
-1x volume control
-1x output jack
No frills. Nothing you don’t need. Just the pure sound of a Fender guitar, and an aggressive pickup, perfect for bashing out those power chords. As much as we love exploring crazy and complicated wiring schemes (check out our Strat-O-Blaster!), sometimes it can serve the song better to forget about all that and just keep things simple!
Punk music is about purity- small bands, powerchords, ‘three-chords and the truth’, and all that good stuff.
Tone nerd alert- in a clever move, the Mark Hoppus Precision basses feature a reverse-P pickup- the treble side of the pickup being the closer to the neck of the two halves. This is smart, because moving the treble half closer to the neck gives it a warmer, thicker tone, and moving the bass half of the pickup closer to the bridge gives it a tighter, thicker sound, resulting overall in a noticeably more balanced output compared to a regular P-Bass configuration. It’s actually the same principle that makes Hendrix fans reverse the bridge pickup angle on their stratocasters(but that’s for another blog..!)
Thing is though, it’s not always very punk to go out and drop £650-1500 on a Stratocaster, Jazz Bass or Jaguar… all that money for something that only has one pickup and one tone control. Why do that, when you could save a tonne of money by modifying the guitar you have already?
That’s where we come in!
If you have a regular Strat you’d like to Tom DeLonge-ify, we can copy your original guard’s outline and screw holes, but also omit a load of stuff- no blade switch, fewer pots and pickups… all nice and easy, and cheaper too as it means less work for us!
If you have a jazz bass, we can convert your pickguard and control plate into an all-in-one white pearl guard, with a reverse P configuration. Tidy!
And don’t forget we can do the wiring too! One pickup (naturally, a Seymour Duncan Invader for guitar, or a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder for bass -what else?!), one CTS A500K volume pot, one Switchcraft Jack socket… that’s also the lowest-priced wiring scheme we offer, so punkifying your guitar need not break the bank (you’ll of course spend the money you saved on covering the body in stickers..!)
Order yours today!
