70's Strat, when you don't want to shell out a grand.

When Fender released the "Billy Corgan Strat" I thought that it was pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, but as I couldn't even afford sliced bread, I thought that I would try my hand at doing one myself.

I like hardtails, but as I play unamplified on the sofa quite a lot, I do like the sound of the springs in the cavity even though I never use the trem and have the bridge flat to the body, usually on 4 or 5 springs.

This one there's no before pics, but you all should know what a beaten up Chinese squier looks like. This was 25 quids worth of, serial number on neck plate affinity series hss, with a knackered truss rod nut.

All the metalwork went in the rock tumbler with nuts n bolts and vinegar for a day or so, and I stamped a new "made up" number on the neck plate, (I made sure that this was a truly fake number to ensure that nobody gets ripped off in the future, I usually make a few clear "mistakes" to ensure this with all my projects).

The plastics were cracked and scored, so a bit of pretend dirt, and glue, and a shielded foil backing applied to make sturdy.

I made an adaptor to cover the humbucker cutout from a broken backplate, and screwed it on. The thinking behind this was that I've seen so many 70's strats that have been butchered and have weird individual home made repairs and adjustments over the years, when they were  used for playing not collecting.

The neck was a bit more in depth, I had to drill out the old truss rod nut and replace it, I could have taken off the fretboard and replaced the whole thing, but I thought "what would they do in the 70's?". I'll admit it, the drill slipped and a bit of a balls up occurred. So what else could I do, a truss rod cover was the only option.
I went for an aged satin finish neck with some pretend age to it, I did give it a set of Grovers as I like them a lot, if only they had split posts they would be perfection imo. The neck was coloured with paprica and turmeric in cooking oil (be sure to wipe with acetone well before applying clearcoat) and the back given some age with the old magic wood mixture (disolve wire wool in vinegar) yo have to be careful with this, it turns bare wood black, so you need to wash it off when it gets to the shade of grey required, any digs in the wood will go black, adding to the aged patina.

Fretboard oiled, frets polished and levelled, neck job done.

Just a note, when applying waterslide decals,add a bit of PVA (wood and paper glue) to the water and mix in to dissolve, it helps no end with adhesion, and if you want the old style where you can see tha outline, don't put clearcoat on before the decal, if you want invisible outline, give it a couple of coats before you apply.

The body, had a poly finish, as did most of the 70's strats, this stuff is like concrete, so I threw it out of the window, and kicked it round the garden for a bit, then I knocked in the washing line post with it, and then threw it back into the flat. As you can see, this did very little actual damage to the body other than look like it had been not particularly cared for over the years.

On to the electronical side of stuff now, into the knackered looking but structurally sound scratchplate, I stuck 3 double single humbucker thingies, and a switch to tap the bridge and neck, to allow a triple pickup front and back option as well as the standard 5 positions. The wiring was nice and tidu as usual, but you'll have to trust me on that one as no pics.












Black knobs and pickups as was the preference in the 70's, a busted up backplate, 5 springs and a setup and hey presto, a nice strat that would fool anyone at a distance into believing that it had been dragged around various dirty smoky clubs for 30 years.



Edit/Update: I forgot that I also drilled out the plastic MOP fretboard markers and replaced them with clay, now I know that when people refer to clay fret markers they mean the colour, as I think that they were originally floor tiles, but I didn't have any of those, so I used clay, looks ok to me. (see last pic)

Grantson Strat Copy MIJ

Picked up this one:

Cost me about a score. First eight frets, completely shot and the weirdest size bridge cavity ever. Decided to fill the trem hole (yes that is the correct name for it, the monkey told me), and went for a hardtail. Used turmeric and paprika in oil to stain the wood, great stuff for aging pale wood.

Replaced the first eight frets with a pile of old MIJ ones that came out of the spares box, saved from a fretless bass where half the frets were knackered.

It needed a full scratchplate assembly so I looked around the house, and realised that I didn't have a sunburst/tort strat, so the choice was made.

Absolutely no excuse for untidy wiring here, stuck in a set of old MIM fender pups I had acquired i9n a box of odds and sods, and hey presto, A rather nice vintage hardtail strat with a weird twist of MIJ wrong logo.

For upcoming projects I'll try and get some better "during" photo's.

Mike's Anarchy

I've got a fair few backdated projects to put on, so I'll be pretty regular with updates to start with, until I've caught up to the latest ones.

First off, we have a battered old 70's MIJ unbranded one. This was done for a friend as a favour.

It came to me with a story, it was rescued from the stage after a punk gig in the late 70's after being smashed to pieces, it was given a plexiglass pickguard sometime after and the neck was put back together with car body filler.

I should have taken a shot of the back too, the neck was in a real state, electronics shot and bridge missing.
The brief was to put it back together using the punk ethic, using found items and true DIY methods.

The first step was to grind out the loose filler, and replace with epoxy, a quick bit of sanding and job done. Was pretty uncomfortable to play though, so the neck got a coat of paint, not any old paint though, road marking paint left on an abandoned building site and rescued many years ago. Some masking tape, a craft knife, and a bit of scraping of edges and the new logo to match the body was complete.

As the idea was to not touch the body too much, that was pretty much left alone, however one pickup was dead, and the other two, not connected to much, were pretty weak, so I built a small veroboard booster and battery, dressed the wires to look cool under the pickguard and cut a piece of old copper pipe from the airing cupboard to serve as a bridge.

Sadly I have mislaid the photo's of the final finished piece, but you get the idea. The copper pipe bridge was a bit of a bugger to intonate but with a hammer and chisel it was shaped to be pretty close and had a really weird sound to it, but that's what punk is all about.

More soon
CM

Introduction

Guitars are nice,

But why would you want one just like everyone else's?

In this blog I will show some of the abominations that I have created and blamed on the monkey.

Hope that you like them, if not blame it on the monkey and he'll probably shower you with poo.

If you want to know how any of these things were done, just ask, and I'll try and get the monkey to answer your questions.