Snake oil or not?

When I modified the mahogany strat I definitely was aiming for a 'hot rodded' one.

One of the things I dislike about strats is when the tremolo isn't very stable in use. I get you can't hang off it like a locking one, but I want to be able to use it a little. However tuning wasn't that stable, despite the quite decent 'modern' Wilkinson tremolo I fitted.

It already had decent locking machine heads but with the string trees currently fitted the strings were going through quite a steep angle from the nut. I sort of figured this is half the problem. I was considering spacing them out from the face of the headstock with some washers but managed to pick up some GraphTech Tusq string trees cheaply that are not only slightly taller but supposedly made of magic lubricating stuff.

Having fitted these it certainly keeps tune better when you use the tremolo, is that because of the gentler angle, the smooth contoured slots in the trees or the magic lubricating stuff they're made of?

I may tread this very well worn road some more and fit a GraphTech nut as well. The current nut is dirty and chipped anyway, even though it's 100% usable.

Ideally I'd also like to fit the 2-point tremolo I bought, which I'll revisit at some point.

Can you tell I'm putting off sanding.

Get a grip

It's a long weekend so I started it by knocking one of my minor projects on the head.

First up the mahogany strat needed a little wood removing from the jackplate route so I could fit the slightly bulky stereo socket I had to go with the pickups. There was probably a subtle way to do this but I just hacked at it with a 10mm drill bit until the plate fitted.

Given I could see myself messing about with the pickups a bit I fitted a 3-way connector to the battery, socket and earth leads. I've a load of this kind of stuff kicking around from rewiring my various dodgy motorcycles. With a plug fitted I could just wire the scratchplate up and plug it in. It also means I can mess about with alternative pickups just by sticking them in a scratchplate and fitting it.

As I am 'hot rodding' this strat I've also fitted some locking machine heads in the style of Schaller RotoGrip ones. The Schallers or equivalent Sperzels are quite pricey but AxesRUs do cheap and cheerful Korean copies. I'd previously used these on the black Tele and I'm hoping that this will help keep it in tune when using the tremolo.

These machine heads have a pin running down the middle of the shaft that you tighten down onto the string as it passes through the hole. It also makes stringing the guitar dead easy.

So, having done this I wired up the Reflex pickups according to the diagram I've got and found that the mid/high controls didn't work at all.

I wasn't that surprised as I realised while doing it that there was a spare black wire not mentioned in the diagram and it had originally been connected to the single pot controlling the treble/mid boost.

So I simply desoldered the blue wire from the two pots and soldered this black one to both instead. While I was there I also removed the earth connection to the pots. It seemed to make sense as it wasn't connected to the treble/mid pot originally.

With this done the pots worked well but the mid boost was in reverse, so I had the guitar apart yet again and swapped the connections to sort this.

I'm glad I fitted that plug so I could whip the scratchplate on and off easily.

With the guitar finished off I remember why I liked the Reflex pickups in my EC29. These single coil sized ones do a pretty convincing single coil sound with the mid/treble boost in the neutral position but absolutely scream when you wind the boost up. With the boost turned down it does some interesting 'thin' and 'flat' sounds that work much better clean than overdriven. I can't see me using these much though.

The combination of locking machine heads and new tremolo seem to work well too. I can see me playing this guitar a fair bit over the next few days. It needs a little more setup too, I've floated the tremolo, adjusted the action, made the saddles match the radius and done the intonation but want to go back and tweak it a bit more.

Power Igor!

As I'm fitting active pickups to this guitar I need somewhere to put the battery. I waved a battery box I bought ages ago at the back of the guitar looking for a sane place to fit it. This needs to be in a decent expanse of wood and close to one of the other routes so I can drill a hole to pass the wire down.

I ended up putting it immediately behind the tremolo route. I've seen batteries placed here before and it's become obvious this is a good place for them.

Ideally I would have used a template but I just went for it freehand after taping the guitar and marking out a rough outline of the box. I'm reasonably happy with how it's turned out. The lip on the edge of the box covers a multitide of sins.

More profligacy

So, when faced with the fact my pillar drill to won't be able to widen the holes for the nice two point tremolo I've bought I just went out and bought a more traditional six screw one.

It's not quite as nicely made as the two point one, which really is lovely but it does just fit straight on. I can always go back and fit the two point one later.

My next move is to route out a space for the battery box and I've waved it vaguely at the guitar body this evening. I'm not really happy with any of the candidate locations, I'll have to tape the body and start marking it up.

By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail

So, after hours of sanding the thick finish off the strat body I got frustrated and didn't spend nearly long enough with the fine paper getting the gouges out. So I've a whole load of sanding whorls showing through when I put the black on.

Oh well, at least I've proved the nitrocellulose goes on well and dries hard quicker than I expected, even if I'll have to sand lots of it back off again. I can see me ordering more cans.

Playing with toxic chemicals

So, after a load more boring as hell sanding, I had a go at spraying the strat body. As I'm using some nitrocellulose spray cans I bought ages ago I was a good boy and used a proper organic solvent absorbing breath mask.

Although when I went and sprayed it I'm pretty sure they smelled like the spray cans of my youth that I cheerfully used indoors with no protection.

First I did a light dusting of primer then a few hours later a fairly solid coat of black. As expected I got overenthusiastic and put a couple of runs in it. So once it's touch dry I'll move it into the shed and it can bake in there until next weekend when I'll flat down the runs and go again.

I'm going with black because that's what the 'Dave Murray' strat comes in. Any colour you like so long as it's black.

The vintage style bridge from the mahogany strat will get transplanted along with the electrics, so I reckon I'm pretty much there with bits I need to complete this project.

It'll leave the mahogany strat gutted so I need to decide what I'll do with that. I suspect I'll fit a modern 2-point tremolo instead of messing around with fitting a Floyd Rose. I've a lot more things with locking tremolos than non-locking.

It also occurred to me that I've a couple of sets of Reflex active pickups I collected ages ago, one HSS, one SSS and it might be nice to use a set of these on it. If I do I'll route the body for a battery box, therein scratching my urge to bodge.

Welcome to the knackers yard

Tonight I gutted the strat I picked up in the week. It's got a huge 'bathtub' route which should make putting the HSH setup from the mahogany strat in it dead easy, so long as the scratchplate actually covers the hole. It's a really big hole.

Next comes the dull bit, sanding all that lacquer off.

Indie #31 - 'S type' mahogany

A mahogany bodied strat, with a 50s style one piece maple neck. This was bought expressly to make a 'Dave Murray' inspired strat. Which is essentially a black 50s strat retrofitted with cream Duncan Distortions at neck and bridge. There are also chrome pickup surrounds, which I assume on the original guitar hid a scruffy job of fitting the pickups.

So modding a standard strat into an 'inspired by' guitar of my own was not much of a reach really, although the official Fender item apparently has a special neck profile. I won't bother with that.

After a couple of evenings throwing parts together I've got it to the state you see on the left, which is pretty much where I want it, apart from the natural finish body. This is quite a nice large lump of mahogany and I'm now thinking I'll actually keep that on display.

The beauty of working with strats is that I can just lift the whole scratchplate assembly out and install it in another guitar. The cheap strat I've just found is likely to be the home for it once I've refinished the body.

Which means this is still very much a work in progress.

Indie #33 - 'S type' butterscotch

Yes, I've already got one of these in exactly the same finish but this was bought as a 'parts donor' for projects and is the cheapest guitar I've bought, at the grand total of £31.99.

It's even a guitar with a fairly minor but genuine indie rock star heritage. Bought randomly off eBay, the seller was actually Mike Baker of 'The Holloways'. The band received several guitars from Indie some years back. This one kicked around on their tour bus for ages (it shows) and was played by all manner of people they toured with, including Kasabian.

It's not going to stop me gutting it and turning the remains into a partscaster. The plan is to strip the body and use it for the 'Dave Murray' project instead of the last S-type I bought. I like the mahogany body of the other one too much to cover in paint.

It's missing the bridge and is covered in scuffs, scrapes and filth. The photos don't really show how nasty it is, it looks like people have been walking on it. However the neck looks straight and the body dings are all minor. Some of the neck dings are actually through the finish so I may end up refinishing it or swapping necks if they interchange nicely.

I may also take this neck and play with fitting a locking nut to it if some measuring shows there to be enough clearance over the truss rod. It's the next logical step after I built myself a jig and recut the nut shelf on the Mockingbird.

If I do that then I'll route one of my strat bodies for a Floyd Rose and make something reminiscent of a Charvel So Cal, i.e. a first generation superstrat.

The wonder of the scratchplate

I'm not actually a fan of scratchplates on guitars, but boy do they make projects easy.

I quickly whipped the old pickups/controls out and started work on the replacements. As the Dave Murray strats have chrome pickup surrounds, this clashes with the volume control on the scratchplate I bought. So I used a round file to turn the relevant hole into a slot, neatly solving the problem.

As it was a fairly cheap scratchplate, there was only shielding on the control section. I removed this and stuck aluminium foil over the whole thing. This came off a roll of adhesive foil I found kicking around at work, I think originally intended for sealing air conditioning ducts. Once trimmed round with a stanley knife it was quite tidy.

Then it was a piece of cake to stick the pickups in and wire it all up. I'd bought a pair of cream Artec humbuckers with a hot bridge pickup and vintage output neck one in an attempt to mimic the Dimarzio Super Distortion and PAF combo in the original. For the single coil I used one that I'd removed from my black Indie Super-T ages ago, fitted with a cream cover.

The Artecs were only cheap but nicely made and with the guitar all back together sound really decent. I wheeled it out for some practice today and it's a really playable fat strat with a chunky neck and very deep tone, not that 'stratty' at all.

In fact after working on this I'm convinced the body is actually mahogany, not the usual alder or ash. It weighs a ton and the grain looks how I'd expect mahogany to. Although I'll be the first to admit I'm useless at identifying wood grain. Chuck in a Wilkinson trem with great big steel sustain block and the aforementioned humbuckers then I can sort of see why it sounds like it does.

So now I've done the easy bit. Next I have to rip it apart and refinish the body which will be my first experiment with Nitrocellulose.

Wednesday night guitar abuse

So, my project strat is going to have an HSH pickup layout but there's a lump of body in the way of the neck pickup leg and not enough depth for the screw.

Time to break the router out. I left some of the lump behind so the original pickguard can go back on if I fancy it. The neck humbucker now just fits.

I'm going to learn from the RR2V project and do all the functional bits of this one before making any effort at refinishing. It's a lesson you'd have thought I'd have learned years ago from working on bikes but I get caught out by it every time.

Can you tell what it is yet?

So, I might not know what I want to do with the Explorer but I do have another project in mind.

This time, like my Fat Mild Les Paul I'm going to take an Indie I've picked up secondhand and do a rough take on a signature model from one of the big names.

The Les Paul was kind of obvious, given it pretty much started out a clone but this will be more subtle. So, can anybody guess which artist signature model I'll ape with this?

Vintage #2 - 'AV6S'

Another Vintage, another guitar I didn't gel with.

I wanted to try a trad strat as I'd never owned one. This was close but again I just didn't get on with it. I also found the mismatched 'aged' plastic parts really jarred. You've got a mint green scratchplate with yellowed pickups covers, knobs and switch tip. This is a pretty shallow thing to be annoyed by but I'm easily put off.

I also thought the slightly updated body shape and scratchplate design looked wrong. Sad I know.

So I bought an Indie S type, which is 100% trad, and sold this on.

Indie 2 : Vintage 0