I currently have three working electric guitars (though one needs to work a lot better, and I'll have to get on to that at some point); none of which is in the same state as when I bought it.
My first electric guitar began life as a Samick strat copy which was something like $225 (NZ $) back in 1987 or 88. I had that on HP taking up all my money from my crappy supermarket job for about six months. Boy did I appreciate that guitar. The first thing that happened was that Graeme sold me a Dimarzio Super Distortion humbucker for $50 and I got that put in. Yummy! Then I got a Jackson Floyd Rose - and once again had that put in; I wasn't up to touching anything like that at that point. Then I got a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickup put in the middle position. From that point on, I did the mods. I bought a Tremsetter, and whacked that in the back, which was cool; although it reduced the amount of travel, it made the tremolo a little more stable, and I could tune up without sending every string waaaay out every single time I adjusted another string. God that sucks. At some point - being the idiots we were - Serean and I did some big "slam the guitars into each other and make lots of noise" finish to a song, and I found my guitar's neck was well fucked-up. I looked at getting a new neck, but they were very expensive, so I bought a dinky strat called a Rockson, would you believe? for $350. Anyway, I swapped the necks, so my Samick then had a 22 fret neck with a pointy head, triangular fret markers, and a rosewood (I guess - it's dark brown anyhow) fingerboard. That extra fret was a great thing.
Anyway, then I saw Dan Armstrong's wonderful 12-way pickup Super-Strat system (any combination of the three pickups, in parallel or series), and wired that in. I needed to get a special DP3T (double pole, triple throw) switch from Ibanez to do it; the usual DP3T switches are on|off|on, but you need an on|on|on. I'll see if I can find a link to the wiring diagram; it must be online somewhere. Until I do, just do a search for Dan Armstrong and strat: you'll find quite a bit. Next up was a phase switch for the middle pickup, and then I started to get clever. I figured out how to wire in a DPDT (double pole double throw) switch so that in one position everything functioned normally, but when you switched to the other position, the bridge pickup (yummy Super Distortion Humbucker) was connected directly to the output jack, and all the other controls were disconnected. Great for playing some quiet front pickup passage, then switching to a great big mutha distorted lead or something. I was very proud of myself, and christened it a Bam-Bam. (Yes, I might be strange, but if you want to see the wiring diagrams for this and my other switches, click here. I had to get rid of one of the knobs on my guitar to put in the Bam-Bam, so I took the opportunity to rewire the tone, to give a master tone control; I swear, I will never understand why the strat doesn't give a tone control for the bridge pickup. Weird. At various stages, I've also replaced the jack plug (twice), one othe potentiometers, and the strap holders; so all that's stock is the body, the front pickup, the pickguard, one potentiometer, and two knobs. 8)
After a while, I set about fixing up the Rockson. It had a crappy paint job, so I stripped that down to the wood. Then I slightly reshaped the body; putting in bevels in the cut-aways, as it was just flat like a Les Paul, and I didn't like it. I painted it a cool Burgundy, and stuck all the electronics back in. I recently stripped all the guts out of it, and screwed it up when I put them back again, so it hums like a freakin' swarm of locusts, even on the humbucker. I need to get on to that, clearly. The neck at that point was the munted one from my Samick Strat, but I bought another guitar; a Samick copy of a BC Rich Warlock, for $300. I did the neck-swapping thing again, so the Rockson once again had a pointy 22 fret neck, though I had to stick a locking nut on it. The Rockson has a Floyd Rose trem, with no tremsetter, so it dives wildy, is a bitch to tune, and provides some way cool whammy-bar stuff. The Warlock is currently in pieces, along with "Colin": a guitar I haven't mentioned, but was just a piece of crap strat copy I bought from Serean for $50 so I could smash it on stage - how cool was I? ;-P
My latest aquisition was a Yamaha RGX112. I was in a pawn shop, and saw this utterly beautiful purple guitar. I picked it up, and it was light as a feather, and had a 24 fret neck, and by the look of the W on the humbucker in the bridge position, possibly a Washburn pickup. The price tag had $700 crossed out, and it was only $300!! I picked it up, and had a play with it, and it was bloody dreadful! I think that's why the price had come down so much. But instead of putting it down and walking out like lots of people must have, I had a look to see if I could figure out what was wrong. It was simple: some doofus had fucked up and loosened the screws on the bridge, so it was up at like 30 degrees, and so the action was immensely high, and the intonation was shot to hell. I bought it, took it home, fixed up the action and intonation, and it is just awesome!! It has the most incredible smooth singing tone out of the bridge humbucker, the front pickup sounds just like a good strat, and the middle does good things to the other pickups: with the front, it's hum-cancelling, and sounds a lot like a Les Paul-type neck humbucker, and with the bridge pickup, you get a wonderful thin sound like a strat in the same position. A big shock (for me) with this guitar is that it has no whammy bar! It's incredibly light, with bugger all metal, and no floating anything, which I think contributes to it's beautiful tone.
It started life with a strat-style 5 position selector switch, but that didn't last. 8) I have what I call the "Bedrock" switching system in there, which consists of a "Barney" for the bridge humbucker, and "Dino"s for the middle and neck pickups. With that, I can get 13 distinct pickup selections: any combination of pickups in any combination of phase, plus the ability to "Bam-Bam" 8). Before I figured that out, however, I had already got a phase switch installed, (I got the shop to do it, because it needed a new hole being drilled, and also my soldering iron had died, and I just couldn't be bothered, frankly), and so with this switching system, the phase switch was redundant, and I was left with a hole in my guitar. 8( So I had to figure out another switch to put in. I eventually figured out how to stick in a switch that allows me have bridge and middle pickups together in either parallel or series. It does some funny things if I have the neck pickup on as well, and I haven't fully figured that out yet; it's only useful with middle and rear pickups on together.
Well, that's my electric guitars. Weird and wonderful, and I think fairly unique. Have a go at some of the switches if you like the sound of any of them. Let me know if they work out, and if you like them or not.