Back up Strat build

[Mr Jagsquire]

I had some time to spend on it today, so I could look at where the D string broke, since this has happened twice now. I think it's just the strings rusting though as you can see from the close up photos: There isn't anything sharp on the saddle, but I gave it a little polish with some P1500 grade paper just to make sure.

I laid the string over the saddle to show where it broke. Notice that the adjacent G string is a bit black where it passes over the saddle (all that palm muting I do with sweaty hands I guess):


Before polishing; nothing obvious on the saddle itself.



I had a spare pack of Elxir coated strings, though in a lighter gauge than I typically use on my 25.5" scale guitars (I usually fit D'Addario 9.5-44 gauge, which is what was on the Strat in the pictures above). I thought I'd spend a bit of time giving the neck a bit of extra work: Cleaned off some little spots of superglue from the previous fret work I had done as my guy must have wicked some into a few of the frets.

I gave the fingerboard a couple of treatments of Montys presso wax and left it to stand while I did some other jobs around the house, then gave it a buff. Really nice smooth finish (I gave the frets a little polish too before the wax treatment). It's a really deep colour Rosewood, so I had to use the flash to highlight it more:



It looks much darker normally, especially against the Sonic blue:

 

[Riderock]

Good guess but no , that would be too obvious . The case is a hint though.

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

The other colour on the case is a kind of off white/cream I guess, so maybe something along those lines like a yellowed Olympic White?

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

Kind of related to some other posts I've made recently on a thread about CS necks: I'm not keen on the type where they have a very hard line that looks like the masked it off before heavy grit sanding. Since this neck has been sprayed for some time now I wanted to dull down the main section between the first fret and the heal. I have various grades of 3M plastic pads, so I gave it the treatment, then a light going over with P1500 grade used damp, then I buffed each end of the satin areas to blend it back into the full gloss.

Really pleased with how it feels and that it doesn't look like I've masked it off before sanding. From the headstock end:




From the heal end:




I put the Elixir strings on after this and gave it a bit of set up tweak due to the lighter gauge. The intonation was slightly off with the new strings, so out came my Peterson strobe tuner to help get it all nicely spot on. I found the lighter strings a little too easy to press, so I raised the action a tiny bit across all the strings. Now it plays beautifully, so I hope these coated strings last me a little bit longer.



I realised I forgot to add a photo of weighing it with the new body: 3.5Kg instead of over 4Kg:




I've put a short demo piece together showing how the Eric Clapton mid boost works, which I'll upload to Soundcloud and post a link on here to explain the order of the recording.

 

[Riderock]

Sorry , I 'm not trying to hijack this thread , I thought I was on the "What's on your work bench" thread. I will reveal it there when it's done or someone guesses correctly. (Whichever comes first)

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

No problem @Riderock I knew you'd spotted my Sonic blue case. I'll have to look on the workbench thread to see what you reveal as I'm intrigued now.

 

[Riderock]

Coincidently I bought the same tuners for my Squire partscaster build that's going to be faded sonic blue and have the same cabinet as yours also. As they say great minds think alike lol.

 

[guitarmikey]

Nice build, have Fun with!
Here mine:
First and third DIY reclaimed pine. Third has Eric Johnson pups in. Second is FSR AVRI ‘62, with case, cable and strap that I bought later.

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

Nice guitars @guitarmikey and of course good taste on the Sonic Blue case too. I need a cable like yours too, so I can complete the set of Sonic blue body, case, strap locks and cable.

I uploaded this recording to Soundcloud earlier. It's just a short demo to show how the Eric Clapton mid boost works, even though I haven't fitted the Noiseless/Lace sensor pickups normally used in the EC model. I've done similar on a Telecaster and also a Jaguar as I love how dialing a little bit of mid boost in can make the sound a bit fatter and towards a humbucker tone.

In this demo I've only changed the mid boost setting from 0 for the first of each riff, to about 7-8 for the second run through. I left the tone (500k pot with 0.022uF cap) at 10, though typically I also adjust this as well, but the demo would have gone on for hours going through every permutation.



The running order as follows:
Clean first, straight into my Tascam SD32 using the built in guitar sim and some stereo reverb.

Neck no boost, neck with boost. Middle no boost, middle with boost. Bridge no boost, bridge with boost.

Dirty, as above, using an MXR Timmy with gain set to approx 11 o'clock.

 

[Bricks]

I've owned my Japanese Vintage Squier Strat from new in 1982. It's a '57 spec two tone with a maple 'board that I've had re-fretted previously. Those frets are starting to show signs of wear again, so I figured it was time to consider my options for a back up.

I ordered an Allparts SRO-FAT neck with a Rosewood fingerboard as a change from my JV. I like a mix of fat and slim necks, so this should be a change from the medium neck on the JV. It came yesterday and checked over, all OK. The fret ends are a little sharp, but I expected to have to do some work on it, as well as fitting a bone nut. I've got some Fender Road worn vintage tuners in nickel coming today as well.

The plan is to get the neck sorted out, smooth the fret ends, fit the bone nut and give the neck a thin coat of tinted nitro as I did with last year's project (a '54 style Esquire). Initially I plan to fit it to the JV Squier while I then look out for various parts to come up used. Eventually transfer the neck onto another body with all the other parts I buy (plus a few that I will take off the JV and put the original parts back on the JV).

Not much to show yet, but here is the neck from the heel end:
View attachment 456834

Might get some repro clay dots I found on Reverb eventually as I love the look of them. I will roll the fingerboard edges too as I want a really played in feel to this guitar as it will be used as my main gigging guitar when finished.

Doesn't look like 1" from this picture, but the digital calipers confirm it:
View attachment 456835

I'm going to transfer my Bareknuckle Apache pickups onto another 8 hole single ply pickguard I have. I'll put the original JV Squier pickups back on the original 'guard and put to one side for later. Eventually the JV will be back to original as far as I can (some pots wore out and got replaced). I'll move the Eric Clapton mid boost onto the new Strat to go with the Apaches (great combination and huge range of sounds from them).

The second Strat will be in the style of a '59 model, so will eventually get a 3 ply 8 hole 'guard and a lightly aged 2 tone body (to simulate the red part having faded, since I'm less keen on 3 tone Sunburst anyway).

This is my '54 Esquire project from last year. MIM neck on this one, but I did similar work to that planned with the Allparts Strat neck. It's not quite as fat as this Strat neck, but now feels very worn in after the work I did to the fret ends and fingerboard edges: I sanded the poly off the back of this neck and refinished it with the same tinted nitro as I'll use on this project. The Champ clone custom made cab got a coat of the tinted nitro too:

View attachment 456840

Hey,
What are you going to do with the neck from your '82 Squier JV Stratocaster? I'm asking because as you mentioned your replacing the whole neck. I would like to possibly buy that '82 Squier JV Stratocaster neck, I love the vintage specifications of those neck's.

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

Hey,
What are you going to do with the neck from your '82 Squier JV Stratocaster? I'm asking because as you mentioned your replacing the whole neck. I would like to possibly buy that '82 Squier JV Stratocaster neck, I love the vintage specifications of those neck's.

It's back on the JV Squier; I only tried the Allparts one on it as a test, sorry. I might buy a spare as a back up if it starts to get close to needing a second refret, but I'd never part it out (or part with the whole guitar for that matter; had it for over 39 years now ).

The main purpose of this build was so that I don't have to take the JV out to gigs where I'm not confident I can keep it very close eye on it.

 

[guitarmikey]

Nice guitars @guitarmikey and of course good taste on the Sonic Blue case too. I need a cable like yours too, so I can complete the set of Sonic blue body, case, strap locks and cable.

I uploaded this recording to Soundcloud earlier. It's just a short demo to show how the Eric Clapton mid boost works, even though I haven't fitted the Noiseless/Lace sensor pickups normally used in the EC model. I've done similar on a Telecaster and also a Jaguar as I love how dialing a little bit of mid boost in can make the sound a bit fatter and towards a humbucker tone.

In this demo I've only changed the mid boost setting from 0 for the first of each riff, to about 7-8 for the second run through. I left the tone (500k pot with 0.022uF cap) at 10, though typically I also adjust this as well, but the demo would have gone on for hours going through every permutation.



The running order as follows:
Clean first, straight into my Tascam SD32 using the built in guitar sim and some stereo reverb.

Neck no boost, neck with boost. Middle no boost, middle with boost. Bridge no boost, bridge with boost.

Dirty, as above, using an MXR Timmy with gain set to approx 11 o'clock.

Cable is from F.
If in need for fatter/boost tonality, I made some other versions... check here:

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

I did go for a fatter 'base' tone on a Tele build I did at the end of last year; well technically it's a Cabronita. I had the TV Jones Classic/Classic plus pickups left over from an upgrade I tried on a Gretsch, which I took back out as I'm selling that guitar.

This worked out really well, though I've 'borrowed' a neck off another Tele at the moment testing out what I want to buy for it (I have another one on a partcaster I built too with a fat profile same as this Strat 1" deep 1st to 12th).

Anyway, this is probably my next respray job because I bought it pre-finished and missed that they don't do 'NOS' finishes. It came with nitro crazing, which I didn't want and it's also nothing like 'Pewter' which it is meant to be. I'm going to strip this down and respray it in the spring. Then I'll strip and refinish the Strat (after I sand the contours to make them more rounded like the original heavy body I fitted first).



Hard to tell, but after I machine polished the body the crazing was a bit less obvious, but I'm still not happy with it, nor the colour:




It's lighter than the Strat though, so I can't complain:




I do like that the Strat can be dialed back to be the more typical Strat tones, especially with those PV65 pickups in it and the 500K/0.022uF tone circuit, though the Cabronita does give me a different tone in a familiar Fender body/neck. I have an SG and an Epiphone LP, but I guess we don't talk about those on here.

I must have a look for the blue Fender cable...I'll probably end up changing the plugs on it (like I have on most of my Fender cables as they always seem to fail too soon), but at least it's the right colour.


PS: This is the back up guitar I usually take to gigs, so I guess this is the 'backup for the backup'.

 

[Mr Jagsquire]

I've been gigging this back up Strat since last November and taken it to a few open mics as well. After I swapped to Elixir coated strings I haven't had any more problems with strings snapping over the D saddle (it was polished smooth, so was rust from my sweat hands causing the problem ).

As we have a gap between gigs now due to our singer taking a month holiday soon, I'm going to strip the lighter body down, shape it a little better, then refinish it in a lighter shade of Sonic blue using nitro. Just brought this thread back up so I can add photos as I go through these steps. I'm currently spraying an Allparts neck I bought for a Tele, so once that is finished I'll start on the Strat.