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Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
Nocaster (reloaded)
I decided to keep the Fender Affinity Tele as it is for now (see this thread)
The desire to make something led me to a cheap, Chinese guitar kit for £75. How good could a piece of crap look and sound on a budget, I wondered? So Project Crapocaster was born. The kit arrived last Monday. Headstock had to be cut to shape. A new bone nut, rewired with period cable, better pots, capacitor, switch and ToneRider Vintage pickups. A light fret dress with a small file, frets polished and a thorough setup. Never touched a truss rod or bothered much with intonation and frets before but it's not so hard.
Plays surprisingly well, intonation is spot on now and it quacks like a Tele - deep through to bright. Good sustain considering the cheap basswood body. Total spend was less than £150. Finished in Tru Oil, wax polish and clear enamel on the headstock. Thanks to my friends for their tips and support.
I like it so much that I am going for better, period tuners, two round string trees and replacement bridge saddles - the kit saddles have some odd vintage string spacing going on.
Here is a video I made today. Sorry about the filter and aspect ratio. I was an experiment that went a bit wrong. Recorded on an iPad, so it's not the best sound but you should get the idea. Low volume (Sunday afternoon) with a touch of reverb through a Fender tube amp.
I have been trying to learn the blues from YouTube and listening to Spotify since Christmas but I am encouraged enough to keep it up.
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I like the way it looks and sounds. I take it you added the water slide decal on the hs. A cheap guitar body can sound great, but a cheap neck can be a problem. The main issue with cheap tone wood found in electric guitars is generally related to appearance--it's usually paint grade wood.
The video has an artistic look to it and adds a bit of mystery to your performance. It looks like a worthwhile experiment to me. When you take a single note solo in blues you can modulate with the chord changes just as you would in jazz. It sounds better to an audience and is more fun for the player.
Pgh_flamenco is right. I have lived long enough with the cheap neck and couldn't pass up a B stock North American maple neck on eBay. I much prefer maple over rosewood on a Fender. Rosewood seems to better suit Gibsons.
So, I have installed the rather orange neck, vintage tuners, two round string trees and new compensated bridge saddles to get rid of the uneven string spacing. No Fender logo this time, I am working on my own design.
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