[tuloose]

i heard that you can replace the internal organs of a guitar

is this true?

if so how hard is it and what affect does it have?

[starsailor]

With an electric depending on your experience you can do a total rebuild if you want to, most parts are replaceable you can change the neck, tuners, upgrade the electrics, change the pick ups etc. I don't think I'd mess with an Acoustic but you can change tuners bridges, saddles, add a pick up but it does depend on your experience, some of the techs here can be more specific but if you want to soup up your guitar and change the sound that can be done yes.

[allthumbs]

I just put up a link to a page with simple guitar mods in the Gear Forum you might want to look at.

[Stratrat]

If you mean the volume/tone pots, switches and input jack when you're referring to the "internal organs", then yes - they can be replaced. How easy it is depends upon how good you are at wiring, soldering and reading wiring diagrams.

What effect it has depends upon what you replace. For example, you can vary the overall tone of your guitar by using different value tone pots (250K, 500K, 1 meg, etc.) and also by using tone caps (capacitors) of different values. You can also add a "treble bleed" to your volume pot (a resistor and capacitor) that will reduce the treble roll-off / preserve the brightness as you turn the volume down. If you look under "Guitars" on the page that Allthumbs linked to in his other thread, there is a lot of discussion about pots, caps, etc. in much more depth.

Unless you're having electrical problems with your guitar, it doesn't make a lot of sense to replace all these parts unless you know what you're doing and are doing it for a specific reason (more/less treble, adding a "no-load" tone pot, etc.)