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Posts: 6447
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
My Christmas project
I am going to rebuild this sorry old 1988 Fender USA Strat. I have a new Squier Bullet as a donor and have managed to find one 1990 Fender pickup, so far. I am working on buying another. Meantime, I will use cheaper Fender ceramics.
The neck will be from the Bullet, suitably aged with a new graphite nut and vintage button tuners, until I can find a USA Fender neck.
Tremelo block will be from a MIM Strat. Pick guard will probably be a 3-ply mint colour that I have knocking around.
Vintage rewiring kit is on order. I will smooth out the body paint a little but leave it as a relic, I think.
I will post updates as they happen.
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Las Navidades en plan guitarrero. !Qué proyecto más bonito! Feliz Navidad, colega. !A disfrutar!
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
I will smooth out the body paint a little but leave it as a relic, I think.
That has “regret” written all over it, I fear. I hope you can be persuaded to hold off on doing anything whatsoever to the body until the project is finished. Just in case. You can always disassemble and do a clean up later, but once the natural aging is gone, it’s gone…
I know it’s definitely an eye of the beholder thing, but I don’t see a sorry old USA strat body. I see something proudly wearing the battle scars of the years. It’s beautiful. The custom shop does a booming business artificially arriving at what you’ve got already prepped and waiting for rebirth.
But regardless, it’s going to be a fun project! Keep us posted, please. I love this stuff…
That body is from an era when super Strats were popular. That’s why it has a swimming pool route. You could put three humbuckers in this guitar. Most of the Strat bodies I’ve seen were either three S or HSS.
Have you considered using locking tuners? That should solve any issues you have with tuning stability. This old-style trem system can be a nuisance.
I am not sure if this has been intentionally reliced or not until I actually receive it later this week. I have no intention of refinishing it and won't do anything until I have assembled it all and checked it out.
Not a big fan of humbuckers on Strats, but I could install them in a spare pick guard to try them out.
Split coil humbuckers are the future of strats. IMO.
I've been around and I disagree. Love Gibson P90s, Gibson humbuckers and the Strat middle/neck position. I split the coils on my SG in the early 80s but it wasn't great. Something to do with the phase maybe?
Not that into the Strat bridge pup which is why HSS took off, I guess.
I printed my own decals after an eBay disappointment. Yes, it is a Fender neck (Squier), so I am not faking anything (apart from the Custom Shop thing, my bad)
New graphite nut, sanded and lots of brown shoe polish. Looking rather vintage.
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New graphite nut, sanded and lots of brown shoe polish. Looking rather vintage.
When I finish a neck using Tru-Oil I usually apply mineral oil directly to the raw wood first. Over a period of a few months the mineral oil decays under the Tru-Oil and turns golden brown.
Thanks for the thread. I look forward to following your process. I rarely have anything useful to say in these building threads so I don't post, but I enjoy following them.
I never really tried Split coils until recently, on a PRS. I liked it in this particular model, but it was still not exactly a perfect single coil sound either, but still a great sound. I think it was “Paul’s model” or something (the setup he personally uses) … $$$$
RE: My Christmas project (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)
quote:
Bagged another 90s pickup today and stained the Bullet neck. It's looking old.
Cool thing about Strat culture is people mod their guitars and then put the removed components up for sale to offset the costs. I picked up a 2010 Strat Deluxe a couple of years back and the previous owner had swapped out the bridge pickup with a single coil sized Seymour Duncan humbucker. Luckily, he had kept the original pickup (I think each noiseless PUP in these might be unique to its position) and the first thing I did was put everything back to original.
I truly love pretty well everything about that guitar. One cool thing it has is the ability to put the N+M, M+B, or all three PUPs in series. There are two other settings that do some out of phase parallel stuff that are pretty useless, but apparently a couple of years later they modified it so they would all sound good. I also have a jazz bass with the S1 switch that puts the pickups in series, and on a jazz bass it’s a really nice option to have.
This project of yours is going to be a lot of fun. Don’t forget to take pictures as you go, seems like a bunch of us on here are interested in following along.
I am not sure I will get the body I just bought as the seller is being really weird about shipping or even a refund. I leave that to eBay and PayPal, so we will see.
With a lack of an immediate project I turned back to the Squier Bullet donor guitar and gave it a bit of a spruce. It was a lot of work. I toned down the shiny paintwork to age it a little and installed a very cheap, fully-loaded pick guard, just to test.
In mint green with ceramic pickups, knobs and switches it was all of 13€ a year ago. Surprisingly, quite a decent sound. See for yourself.
It took me ages to figure out that the new graphite nut was too shallow and the overall setup was a nightmare with the floating tremolo.
I put in a higher action and fatter strings for some tone. I used a pretty good condenser mic. synced to an iPhone video.
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The site also features an online store with relic Strat parts, like pickguard and tuners and the like, but upon further examination it appears to be a series of links to other sales sites like Reverb, so maybe it’s just good for information purposes.
Hopefully the body arrives without incident and checks out OK, it would be a shame to get all built up for nought.
Hopefully the body arrives without incident and checks out OK, it would be a shame to get all built up for nought.
Nope, PayPal will refund me. He was being a **** and I don't trust him, so it's for the best. Apparently, it was reliced and then painted with a rattle can.
I now have a full set of decent Fender pickups. Two from the 1990s and a used Texas Special for the bridge or neck. Haven't decided yet.
I also found a really good maker of mildly worn nitro alder bodies here in Italy. They look great to me, this one in Sonic Blue caught my eye and I await delivery. Pretty much everything else will be Fender.
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The site also features an online store with relic Strat parts, like pickguard and tuners and the like, but upon further examination it appears to be a series of links to other sales sites like Reverb, so maybe it’s just good for information purposes.
Hopefully the body arrives without incident and checks out OK, it would be a shame to get all built up for nought.
Rob, Spent some quality time on the fuzzfaced.com site and learned a lot. Found out my '72 corona strat is not. It's at my place in western Alaska and I haven't been there in a few years so I can't compair s/n etc to see what I've really got. To be honest I don't care, I turn the gain and volume up to eleven on my amp, then crush cords and rattle the widows and walls with her.
Simon, looks like fun. As a teenager I would buy ano old electric cheap guitar from a pawn shop, spray paint or whatever and bang around on it until I was bored or gave it alway or whatever, to be honest I can't recall where they all went... faded memories of my early youth.
HR
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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy, doesn't have to be fast, should have some meat on the bones, can be raw or well done, as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
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