G'day from Australia

G'day all, I'm Pete from Australia. I'm 38 and newly back into guitar playing.
I originally started playing guitar on a Conora strat copy back in 1988. I loved that guitar but moved onto bass to join a band in 1990 and the Conora got pinch by a girl I was seeing at the time. As I was a much better bass player than guitarist, I never really played guitar again. Marriage, kids, house and marriage break up saw most of my dreams of becoming the next Les Claypool take a back burner but I have kept bass up as a hobby, jamming with friends when I could.A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend's 20yo neighbour asked if I wanted his old guitar before he threw it in the garbage pile. Well, it's a strat copy of unknown origin, had the entire (and I mean ENTIRE) guitar spray painted black and red even the fingerboard and back of neck! Some of the wiring was missing but I figured I could give it a quick spruce up and make it a hack around guitar for my kids who are now entering their teens. The neck sanded back easily, managed to gently clean off the fingerboard, gave the body a light sand (it's ply so I wasnt going to go crazy with a good paint job until I knew how it played) and got to work with the soldering iron and some schematics then a decent set up and plugged her into my bass rig. I left the headstock & pickguard with a bit of a rustic/worn look for now until I decide what to do with the body. The neck feels really good and the body, although heavy for a guitar, has nothing on the weight of my '78 Yamaha bass! I'm really happy with how she plays and have been slugging away re-learning chords and basic scales. I have always been more into blues/rock and funk and love the strat sound for that. Am hoping the kids will get started playing on this and enjoy it as much as I do, although I'm not telling them that guitar is my new secret passion!

 

Thanks guy. I am in Adelaide, South Oz Corona, starting to warm up nicely here ready for another blistering summer!
I have found lots of help by reading thru the older posts so I didnt annoy you guys too much with the same old questions. So far, trem is screwed down with 5 springs to keep it tight against the body. The next stage will be a basic respray, maybe jungle themed to match my bass. I was toying of the idea of a Gary Moore (my hero in the 80's) single humbucker but with a fixed bridge but think I will keep it as is. So far, just with an el-cheapo Digitech bass effects pedal thru the Ashdown bass amp she sounds pretty good!