I've known this 1977 Fender Stratocaster for a long time. My good friend Joe bought this one about 30 years ago in the current state it's in below. It had the typical vintage 80's makeover with a set of Bill Lawrence L-220 pickups, single volume and tone controls, Schaller tuners and lots of brass(bridge, knobs & jack plate) - the nut was miraculously spared.
This was Joe's main guitar for over twenty years until he picked up a '58 Les Paul reissue a few years back and the Strat ended up becoming a wall hanger. The main issue being that there was almost no tonal variation with the current setup. My advice was to turn it back into a vintage sounding Strat again, and the best place to start was with a new set of pickups. So I opened it up to see what I was dealing with and found out that everything needed to be replaced. The fourth position on the switch didn't work at all and the pots were horrible.
I picked up a set of Fender Custom Shop Texas Special Pickups, three CTS 250K audio taper pots, an 022mf 250V tone cap, 5-way switch, three Fender knobs and got to work wiring it up vintage style.
Next I cleaned up the frets and rosewood fingerboard with some lemon oil and #0000 steel wool, put on a new set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings, and set the intonation and action.
I adjusted the truss rod and tightened the neck plate screws, removed two of the tension springs from the back of the vibrato assembly as three are enough to do the job, and also added a spare plastic back plate that I had lying around.
And here it is a Stratocaster again. The ash body has a nice grain pattern and the guitar now looks and sounds amazing. The only other things I would still suggest are a reissue bridge, chrome jack plate and three layer pickguard.
Joe is quite happy with the results and says the new setup sounds great.
Recently my friend SL, guitarist with local Toronto band Waveline, asked if I could help him out with his main stage guitar, a very pointy 2008 Jackson Randy Rhoads model in metallic pink. He tunes this one all the way down to Drop B (B-F#-B-E-G#-C#) and was having issues with the intonation, tuning stability, and wanted the pickups switched out. He was told by a couple of local shops it would be a four week turnaround time. I was able to get it back to him within a week and just in time for an upcoming show.
The guitar was currently set up with a Seymour Duncan Distortion (SH6N) neck pickup, and a Duncan Nazgul bridge pickup. SL was looking for a warmer sound and wanted the original Alnico equipped Duncan JB/Jazz pickups (Seymour's favourite combo) installed back in.
Pickups installed and ready for a setup with a new pack of Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalt strings in 11 to 54 guage.
First off I started by leveling the bridge to the body. It was leaning forward and was very unstable when palm muting the bridge. So I brought it back down by tightening the tremolo springs on the back of the guitar.
Leveling the bridge also resulted in lower action.
Then I set the intonation.
SL doesn't use the Floyd Rose on this guitar because the floppy strings were causing issues with tuning stability. So I suggested blocking off the Floyd since he doesn't use it anyway and he agreed to give it a try.
The end result was better sustain and perfect tuning stability because it essentially turns the guitar into a hard tail. The maple blocks are only wedged in place and can be easily removed if he ever wants do some dive bombs with the Floyd Rose again.
SL was very pleased with the results and says all the tuning issues were resolved and the guitar sounds amazing now.
So I guess I'm on a bit of a roll. Two posts in less than a week. Here's a '64 Jaguar which is going be the second installment in my "Used Cars" series. This model was the Top-of-the-Line guitar in the 1964 Fender catalogue, and I've always wondered if I could build a vintage Fender Jaguar for less than it would cost me to buy one. The answer is yes, but it took me over three years to find all the parts at reasonable prices.
I started off with a '64 body and pickguard that I picked up from the same seller. It had a horrible copper paint job but I was hoping the original finish might still be underneath after I found the typical vintage Sunburst pattern under the painted brass grounding plates.
The tortoise shell pickguard is a wonderful reddish brown colour with a lot of depth, but had several cracks that I reinforced from behind with aluminum tape which also provides shielding for the pickups.
I stripped the body and found all the "factory correct" tooling marks made during production, but no luck finding the original sunburst finish underneath.
The B width neck is date stamped DEC 1964. It is well worn, but still has the original frets and nut.
The pickups have the short-lived yellow stamped date code and were made by pickup winder CO on Oct 21 '64, too bad they were missing the pickup covers and claws.
I found a matched set of upper and lower control plates with the factory wiring harnesses still intact and pots dating to the 20th week of 1963.
Vintage bridge and Patent No. 2,972,923 vibrato and arm.
L-series neck plate with correct 2 inch screws.
At this point I had almost all the vintage correct parts I needed to complete my 1964 Fender Jaguar. The only new parts I used were repro Kluson tuners, aged pickup covers & claws, and a funky toggle switch plate featuring the Wronski mod. It's named after surf guitarist Dave Wronski and made by Paul Rhoney Guitars. It is a stock size Jaguar toggle plate but cut for a Tele switch instead of the three standard slider switches. Similar to the Johnny Marr mod, but it's on a diagonal and requires no alteration of the cavity.
I decided to finish the guitar in black lacquer just because it goes so well with a tortoise shell pickguard, and to lightly age the body to match the wear on the rest of the parts. The cavities and neck pocket were left unfinished.
Now to install the brass grounding plates, pickups, and rewire it all with correctly coloured cloth push back wire.
1964 Jaguar back on the road again.
Well it's only been a year since my last post, better than four years I guess, but the workbench has been quite full. This '67 Firebird is going to be the first installment in my "Used Cars" series. It came in badly broken down and in need of serious repair.
The good news was that the seller's description stated that the "headstock was in hand."
The two pieces kind of fit together, but the crack in the headstock had been broken and repaired so many times; and was completely full of epoxy and filler, that the headstock was not straight or level.
It also looks like the guitar had been refinished about five times, so the first thing I had to do was get everything back down to bare wood to see what I was dealing with.
The guitar had deep scars on the front and back from previously being stripped with a circular grinding wheel. The front even shows they didn't have time to remove the pickguard so they just stripped around it. The control cavity had the least amount of tampering and it looks like the original colour of the guitar was Frost Blue.
The break goes straight through the serial number and only the first two digits ("00") remain completely visible which puts this one to 1967.
Gluing the headstock back together was a real clampfest, but there was a lot of surface area to work with and I managed to get everything straight.
Note the angled clamp on the tapered dowel going through the A String tuner hole. This increases the downward clamping pressure on the surface area of the break.
Here's the headstock all glued back together and nicely levelled, but there were still several gaps from missing wood that needed to be addressed. So I had to do some surgery and a transplant.
I also added a mahogany veneer to each side of the headstock which required an even bigger and better clampfest than the first one.
I had to sand for days to get rid of all those circular disc marks and bring the body back into respectable shape.
Now to add some colour. I'm going with the original Frost Blue.
I gave the guitar a lightly aged finish, but left the control cavity as it was to show the original Frost Blue peeking through. Pickups are a matched set of Ernie Ball MM90's that came out of a Music Man Albert Lee model.
1967 Firebird back on the road again.
Now all I needed was something to keep it in. Stay tuned for the resto on the case I found on my neighbours front lawn destined for the trash.
