80's build.

So on this build i decided to go the way I would have probably gone back in the early 80s.

The neck is a very nicely made modern c neck from the Strat elite. Adding this to a lightweight 62ri body got me thinking about going mint green again but then I decided to stick on the 70's pick guard  with 70's black original covers and knobs as well as a 70's RI bridge with brass charvel string holders. 

The Elite Stratocasters of 83/84 are responsible for the neck and it's absolute class. The back is stripped of all laquer , so feels awesome and the schaller/Fender tuners are a class act on their own. beautifully cast. As written elsewhere, the quality of these guitars was on par with the custom shop and going on the quality of the neck and tuners I can understand why people are scripting as such.

Bridge and neck pickups are vintage Dimarzio and she's wired up with a tone on bridge and neck pickups with middle pickup running straight through. middle pup is an alnico 2 SD. As per the norm all the screws are relic so she looks as if she could easily have been from the early eighties except for the body shape. Those with a keen eye will notice the hole which hasn't got a screw in it as 70's pick guards don't fit directly on 11 hole 62 bodies.

80's Floyd Rose for Zappa project sourced.

Taking shape..

not quite right but has all the necessary parts to start with...

Plan wasn't to buy two necks within a few days...but this came up on the bay and looking at the cost I thought it was worth the money and the effort. It ticks off most of the boxes for the Zappa Strat project and I'm not worried about the quality of the Allparts necks which are made Japan. Those tuners and nut are about half the cost of the rest of the neck. Medium C neck with a compound radius.
Gloss finish also ticks the box.

first things first....

right then, Zappa guitar deco on the bucket list, but first things first. Been busy over the dark months with mixing up and updating as well as facelifting some of the guitars and I'm currently faced with a guitar body that I purchased back in 2009 which deserves a quality rebuild as it used to be one of my favourite guitars but has now had parts removed for greater projects.

the body is an aged olympic white (more vanilla) 62RI , weighing in at 3lbs 15 oz. So for a few weeks I've been looking around for a neck I'd be happy about to join up on this project. There have been some really nice necks up for sale but unfortunately the price tags have been out of the budget for this one and none of the necks had that "something" that I need to convince me to take the plunge..
..until this one came up.

Was rather surprised this hadn't been snapped up. really nice looking piece of maple. the other pictures revealed the varnish on the back of the neck had been played off , so the neck had a classic relic appearance which normally costs top dollar to buy if it hasn't been done naturally.

obviously before I buy anything I make sure I do some research.
So, this came off one of Dan Smiths era oddities in 1983, the American Fender Elite Strat.
reading through some reviews, there appears to be several owners of these guitars who swear by them. Personally I'm not too keen on the look of these guitars, but this neck caught my attention , especially with it's rather unusual neck profile , a 12" radius wide and shallow neck.

really keen on this project.

Grabbed the original tuners as well:

Coming out of winter...

There is one more guitar project that I've been looking at doing for a while. But it's defo got to be a serious attempt at making a decent replica, otherwise it wouldn't be right.

what an amazing guitar the Frank Zappa butterscotch blondie is. My plan is not to make an exact replica as I'm not too keen as he was on getting the electronics sorted out to ensure the sound was right for every room he played in , but the idea is to make a guitar that has the same running gear and looks like it's been around since the 80's, so slightly reliced.
Floyd rose on a flush body of course, and the body contour will be a 50's as opposed to what the original had.
The gears are already in motion...updates to follow...

Håckes Cup tournement winners 2015

For the third year in a row my club squad won the sevens tournament at the Håckes Cup in Wexio.

HoneyBurst Relic Strat.

wont get anything genuinly closer to an SRV "Lenny" style guitar. Obviously "Lenny" wasn't a honeyburst...would have been nicer if it had been...
Specs are high, weight is low.
Body weighs in at 3lbs 5oz.
Bridge is custom shop
Pickups are custom wound 59's SRV sliders
brown cap under the bonnet
FATBOY mint green relic pickguard , knobs  (not sure about the pup covers)
Vintage wiring
And then we come to the neck: It's an 80's era Schecter maple neck with fender on the headstock.
rumours about that this is the same style of neck that Billy Gibbons gave to SRV and which he stuck on "Lenny". I'm not entirely sure if this is the guitar he stuck the schecter neck on, but suffice to say it's an awesome neck from the glory years of Schecter.

Contador and his passion for Oranges...

So for the past months I've been taking care of a horse.
I have to say I was mildly surprised when I discovered he kinda goes nutz when the oranges come out...

G000543 facelift

delighted with the custom made pick guard that arrived yesterday from California.
this guitar is an amazing player , so it was only fair to give her a facelift and I like the result.

obviously the options of pickups and pots were endless, but I kept the guitar as I liked her best, one humbucker in the tail with one volume pot. The humbucker is out of a 1978 greco JB and sounds awesome.

swapsies....

keen for some lite wood strats, so one of them is getting changed....this weighs in at 3lbs 5 ozs and I like the honey burst ...

we shall see...

on the cards...

whilst looking around in my bag of goodies, I came across this bunch of graph tech Ghost acoustic gear...it was ripped out of another guitar..
So...I'm thinking of sticking it in the Strele. The natural body in the pick. I'll not bother with a bridge magnetic pickup, but use the space as a host for the board and such like.
The rosewood neck is currently on the natural tele body. The neck pup is a rio grande that was banging about. Could be interesting with an acoustic bridge and mag neck pup. It's all a bit of a mix and match, genuine junkyard effort, but could be fun .

So, had a quick look at what was in working order and what wasn't.
So the idea is to have an acoustic set-up in the bridge and mag neck pup.
I reckon I'll be able to fit everything...

Tokai neck heel and body

I picked up a rather nice Tokai breezysound 80's telecaster neck that had been mucked around with, which is to say it had Tokai removed and a Fender decal added, as well as some extra holes drilled in the heel with older holes filled in. The seller had also apparently nitio'd the neck which is nicely worn, chunky and has an awesome veneer rosewood fingerboard.

First time I tried to fit the neck though I discovered the new holes that had been drilled would not line up with the vintage USA body. rather annoying as you can imagine...so, i drilled out the crap that had been used to fill in the original holes and they fitted more or less.. I say more or less because, as you can see by the photographs, there is a slight gap between the pickguard/body and the neck. I looked at a Tokai body and noticed they have a slightly different design in the heel, which has the same edges as late seventies fender, but also a kinda crown that sticks out at the same point the truss bar would be. So i guess that is why the neck doesn't fit flush with the body. 

or maybe it's something else...She works anyway and sounds amazing!

 

Due to a lack of parts available..

... It became 1 vol and straight out..

just like the pic

gettin' there

had to get out the hand chisel to open up the neck pickup route to ensure the firebird pup fitted well.

Make a note that Firebird pickups are slightly wider than Gibson mini-Humbucker pickups. This is quite important to understand as the bridge was initially purchased for a mini humbucker but fortunately the builder informed me that this issue had happened previously and that builders had had to file up the bridge to accept a Firebird pup.

These Mountain Queens pickups are sold as mini humbuckers.

As the body had been chewed up over the years I had no qualms at opening up the neck route slightly wider. It was either gonna be a neck pup or I was gonna fit an Esquire guard.

Right then, guard fitted and both pups in place. next on the agenda is to wire up the pups to a three way and stick in some 500 pots. It's old school shielding wiring on these pups so slightly more of a pain when wiring them up as the earthing is part of the initial single wire.

The correct ferrules arrived yesterday and were fitted in the rear as the originals were fitted to another project. If you look closely at the photograph you may notice that where the neck is fitted the wood is also slightly wasted... This body has really gone through hell previously...

So, a few more details that are important to keep in mind as I wait for the neck to arrive. As the body has been thinned/shaved at some point, I'll have to source some slightly shorter neck screws.

Something else I noticed last night whilst shaving the neck route to make way. This body is by all accounts is a very dark wood...I would say mahogany. I'll have to do more research on this.... Like I have written previously, the history on this body goes back apparently to the early 70s... As I've written previously, I'm not convinced, but regardless, it's a dark old wood that sounds really great.

The guard was purchased as being slightly mint green. Doesn't look bad at all. I've still to work on some of the finer details on the fit as you can see a lot had to be modified at the base.

 

decision made...

So, as already reported I've sent off the hand-made pickguard to the experts across the pond who mostly deal with selling G&L pickguards as well as every other model of guard.

It's gonna be a one-off. So, I went through what I wanted. First of all it would be a stock strat set-up with three singles, three pots and a switch...

Then I remembered just how much I enjoyed playing this guitar with only the single humbucker in the tail (which is out of a Greco lawsuit 1978 ).

So, whats coming back is a 4 ply tortoise shell pickguard with one space for a single humbucker and 1 hole for a volume pot and 1 hole for the output jack. Clean lines and no fuss and of course it will keep sound that I like it for. I reckon the tortoise shell will work with the battered candy apple.

can't be worst that what she came wearing...

Mountain Queen tele

So, here's another project going on.

I've been informed that the body started out as a 72 tele body. initially the tele was black.
My question was...
..why is it so thin...and did you realise its a 5 piece body?
reply was: had it thinned...repainted it....

One thing is for sure, it's defo old wood. but it's been hacked around...a drill bit decided to make it into a Nashville and and one point an attempt was made and then attempted to cover up a humbucker in the bridge.

As the info came from a pretty credible source, I'm not gonna make any decision on it. More importantly, it was time to make something a bit different and a bit special out of a body that's obviously got a story to sing.

As I had a few Gemini firebird style pickups sitting around, I decided these would be the best bet for this body as opposed to going to a full size humbucker in the bridge. There is a bloke who sells stainless tele bridges for different configs so that went on order.

Fitted, the plate is ever so slightly too wide to fit into a standard width pickguard, so that's the next headache. haven't decided 100% if I'm gonna fit a neck pickup or if I'll go with an Esquire setup..
If you've been in the same position, you'll understand the types of questions that race through the grey matter...I've ordered a mint green pickguard for a firebird format in the neck..but not sure that will work with the red of the body...the positive was the cheap cost of the pickguard which will mean I can modify the pickguard without getting heaving on the bridge...

Necks on the way. keen to see how this one develops..

 

 

 

Looking around the web, there are some pretty interesting guitars knocked together.

I wonder how Steve Morse telecaster looked before he fitted all the pups..

 

 



 





One of my own

This is my own. Couldn't afford the Carbonita. Body is natural with a bee's wax top. neck is a fatback birdseye. never seen anything with more birdeye . oiled only. can't remember who made the neck or body. I stuck in a TvJones PowerTron Plus ( http://tvjones.com/pickups-2/filtertron-style/power-tron-plus/ ) and modified a telebridge that was made for TvJones string spacing. These pickups are awesome! clean or driven!
Anyway, clean deck, all natural and beautiful neck.