If you’ve been following the BFO Guitar Shop Fiesta Project, well the moment is finally here: pickups for the Fiesta Les Paul. Installing them is a piece of cake but…how will it sound?

Ignore the revoltingly out of focus picture. Wiring guitar pickups is easy. There’s a single wire coming out of the pickup so it’s very hard to screw up. Plug the guitar in and test it before wrapping the knot in electrical tape. As long as your guitar is grounded, it’s also pretty hard to get electrocuted, although it happens.

Both humbuckers fit nice and snug. They appear a little bit off center, but that’s how they fit when they’re screwed in. Any offset should be unnoticeable as far as sound quality is concerned. All that’s left is to close up the hole with the pick guard cover and put some strings on.

Done. It’s been literally decades since this guitar had functioning pickups.

Complete, except for new pot covers and maybe a new toggle switch cover.

So how does it sound? Pretty good actually! We were impressed that it actually has decent tone and is very playable. The action feels great and we haven’t found any dead frets yet. The dual volume and tone controls will take getting used to. It’s been awhile since I’ve messed around with this configuration, but not a bad guitar by any means. By the way, the body appears to be plywood, but it’s very dense which I think contributes to its rich tone. More on this later as there’s much more experimentation in sound shapes to be done here. This thing is coming to my next jam session for a road test.

Update: The Fiesta has moved up the ladder in my collection in terms of usefulness. Of all the guitars I own, this is the best electric guitar for slide playing. Both for blues and rock. The humbuckers really scream and the sustain is very very good. Equally impressive is playing in dropped D tuning. The tone is super rich and makes playing Badmotorfinger /Louder Than Love era Soundgarden a blast.