Reddit reviews Switchcraft 11 Mono Female 1/4-Inch Jack with Nut and Washer, Nickel Finish

I had to do this as part of my senior design project in college! To make things easier, pick up something like this and solder some wires leads to the two holes on the end, one will be the guitar signal and the other will be ground. You can attach the scope probes to these lead wires to see the signal, or connect it to a breadboard. The shaft of the 1/4" jack is the ground point and the tip is the signal.

Keep in mind the signal is going to be very weak (roughly 100mV, depending on how hard you pluck the string). Run it through an amplifier (I used an op-amp) and set the gain appropriately to get a better signal. Of course, this will require a bit of knowledge of op-amps to design a good amplifier.

Here is an image of my guitar captured on a scope. This was taken after the guitar signal was fed through a non-inverting amplifier and low-pass filter. Notice how the period of this signal is roughly 13-14ms? The frequency is about 74Hz, or a slightly flat "E" string. Hope this helps!

If you DO replace your output jack, I fully recommend a switchcraft 11

I buy these in bulk and put them in every single guitar that comes through my hands because they're worth it.

It's a 5 minute job if you or anyone you know has ever soldered before.

http://www.amazon.com/Switchcraft-11/dp/B00C5B20QE

If anyone cares, here's a comparison of switchcraft vs whatever probably came in your guitar:

http://i.imgur.com/qR3MgLB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OhX6ioo.jpg

Strat all the way for the Chili Peppers.

I'd recommend Squier Classic Vibe since they come with proper AlNiCo Pickups, so it'll sound great, and the main problems are the input jack and gloss neck. The neck is completely subjective, so you might actually dig that, and a new input jack is like $15 max, and it's about as easy as it can get when it comes to soldering. Even if you pay someone to do it for you, you'll still save money over what you would pay for a MIM Strat.

The one that looks the most like John's main Strat is the '60s Classic Vibe

If you have the $600, I'd say put locking tuners on to make string changes eaiser, a new nut for tuning stability and tone on open strings, and a good input jack since Squier's are notorious for their loose input jacks.

You can buy one of these and just use the nut and washer, keeping the new jack as a spare, or replace the jack altogether (the Switchcraft is better than a generic jack).