My next Strat...a pictorial 6-17-23 Update

MichaelW

MichaelW

Well-known member
So I was originally going to post this in the "What's on the Workbench" thread but decided it was probably too long.

When built my P90 Tele it was a bit of an experiment with "over routing" pickup cavities to accept P90's.
I didn't want to invest in an expensive body in case I borked it so I bought a GuitarFetish "XGP" USA Spec body.

I've never used their bodies before, in fact I've never even held one of their guitars. But I was blown away by the quality of the body and the finish.
Considering it was a $90 body WITH a finish, I was amazed. The "XGP bodies are all USA specs and from my sample of two, use very good wood that's been well handled. (Eg, properly dried).

They use some kind of catalyzed finish but contrary to what I had expected, it's extremely thin hard coat and very well applied. Not glopped on poly like most imports and certainly way better than what I was expecting for $90.

I was so impressed that I used a coupon and bought a second body for a future project, which is what this thread is about. I have a soft spot in my heart for a Candy Apple Red 60's Strat. I used to own one....and in my misspent youth, the haze of drug addiction, substance abuse, etc....it got pawned at some point for drug money. (A rare glimpse into the true MichaelW...hahah).

Anyway, I got this body for about $80 as I recall. It's every bit as good if not better than the Fender branded Mexican Strat bodies that go for $250.
The finishes are a bit thinner. It's solid alder and just a tad over 4 lbs. So acceptable weight range. The CAR finish was gorgeous. Very deep liquid kind of red.

I've mentioned before that my "preference" is nitrocellulose lacquer for guitar finishes but I am also not a "nitro snob" as many of my guitars are either catalyzed or poly finishes and they sound great to me.

Having said that. I decided to continue experimenting a bit with this body. Since I only have $80 in it (I have more than that in a couple of pedals) I decided to see if I could knock down the "brand new shine" on the finish.

I'm not trying to "relic" the guitar, but rather just dull down the shine a bit, make it look like it's got some play and age on it. I watched a couple of different video's of how other people did it and decided to jump into the project today. All I have is the body right now, nothing else, so there's no big pressure to get it done and get it right so I can finish my build.

This is how the body looked before I started....

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I used a random orbital sander with a medium Scotch brite pad. This is after the first pass.

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After wiping it down I could see some spots I missed....
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I decided to go from the Scotchbrite directly to Meguires Scratch X to start polishing. This turned out to be a mistake.

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It definitely got the guitar to the luster I wanted but the scotchbrite left a lot of ugly little swirls......you can see in this pic.

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Continued in next post......
 
After looking at it in the light of day today, I decided to take another stab at it.....

So I went back at it by wet sanding it with 1500 grit. I did not want to bring it back to the condition it started in so I did not work up successive grits like I was doing a real finish. I just wanted to take out the little swirly scotchbrite pad marks.

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The wet sanding definitely did the job, I also realized that the Scratch X is a bit too fine and buff it back to too much shine than I wanted.
So after wet sanding I used Meguirs "Medium cut" polish and buffed it with that.

I think it worked better.

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After the Mequirs I applied some carnauba wax and buffed it to a dull shine.
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I "think" I'm happy with where it's at now. I need to see it in context, so I have a mint green pickuard on the way and we'll see how it looks.
But the end result is having like a less uber shiny NEW guitar look but more of a "closet classic" kind of look. That should go well with aged hardware when I get around to building this out.
 
Oh and I decided since it was such a nice day out, and I was already outside, I'd go ahead and mask off the cavity and spray it with MG Chemicals Shielding paint.

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I've come to love this stuff. I will NEVER mess with messy, stick copper foil tape ever again....hahaha
 
So I think I'm happy enough with this body that I'm starting to plan out the build. It's going to be a relatively boring vintage style Strat, vintage style 6 screw trem, Mint green guard, cream pickup covers. Some sort of 60's pickup set. I've been thinking either the Fender Custom Shop Fat 60's or Lollar '64 set. I might go out of my comfort zone and try some of the other makers that have been recommended by folks here. (Wolftone, Cavalier, Bootstrap, Zhang, etc)

But I KNOW I'd be happy with either the Fender CS or Lollar's.

Most likely an AllParts SRO-C neck in the raw. I want to try the "Wudtone" neck finishing kit.

All to come in some future NGD....:)
 
I say step out of your comfort zone when it comes to the pickups. Regardless that mint green ream color combo is going to be killer!
 
Seriously wow. This is inspiring. I love the dedication and patience you put into your projects. Love the candy apple as well looks great.
 
I have long wanted a Strat with a Filter'tron in the bridge. But then I figure how much better than a Duo Jet can it sound?? Still, I suspect a Filter'tron in the bridge position of a Strat would sound amazing.

I once built a Thinline Tele with P90s. I had specced the body out for P90s but bought a Filter'tron sized pickguard as well to try Filters if I wanted, and sure enough the P90s didn't do it for me. Installed the Filter'trons (they fit into a P90 rout with room at each end) and wow - that guitar really came to life.

I really like what you do with your guitars. It's so cool to see someone do it for themselves rather than just buy whatever CS Fender they find. Nothing wrong with that of course - I just like seeing what us normal people do!
 
Michael, this is off to a good start. Have you used those XGP bodies before? I've heard they're nicer (and accurately drilled) compared to the cheaper GFS bodies.

Hamish, I really liked those Cabronita Teles Fender came out with a few years ago with the Filtertrons. Wish I would have bought one when they were going for $500. Prices have jumped up a bit on them since then.
 
MichaelW said:
Oh and I decided since it was such a nice day out, and I was already outside, I'd go ahead and mask off the cavity and spray it with MG Chemicals Shielding paint.
Click to expand...
Did you find that paint is enough?
When I found some guitars with that paint I never get a solid continuity of the signal on it, but there's always a certain resistance. I think that paint is not really grounded, so the electronic is not really shielded, but "semi-shielded".
What do you think?
 
cdwillis said:
Michael, this is off to a good start. Have you used those XGP bodies before? I've heard they're nicer (and accurately drilled) compared to the cheaper GFS bodies.

Hamish, I really liked those Cabronita Teles Fender came out with a few years ago with the Filtertrons. Wish I would have bought one when they were going for $500. Prices have jumped up a bit on them since then.
Click to expand...
Yes. Used it on the Tele build linked in the beginning of the post. That one is poplar. They have their "XGP" USA Spec and their "LIDO" import spec. I have not used the Lido but they look mostly the same except they are mostly poplar. I actually rather like poplar for F style guitars. (Some early Tele's were made with Poplar or Pine). The only thing I did not like about the Tele body is how they pre-drilled the control cavity locating the toggle between the pots.
 
Elijah-Baley said:
Did you find that paint is enough?
When I found some guitars with that paint I never get a solid continuity of the signal on it, but there's always a certain resistance. I think that paint is not really grounded, so the electronic is not really shielded, but "semi-shielded".
What do you think?
Click to expand...
I've used it on 2 guitars now and it seems to be fine. I think it's better than the black stuff a lot of makers use. Depending on what the guitar is and how the pickups are installed. On this Strat I will probably run a small ground wire to soldered on screw ring and run it into the cavity somewhere for a secure ground point.

For "ultimate" shielding you really can't beat copper tape. There's no way to shield better than that. BUT, there's always a catch hahaha....I think it impacts the tone. Not necessarily bad on all guitars. My Warmoth Strat with the GFS Mean90's (soon to be BootStrap Clean90's) is copper tape lined. But I really don't like it on single coil Strats.
 
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HamishR said:
I have long wanted a Strat with a Filter'tron in the bridge. But then I figure how much better than a Duo Jet can it sound?? Still, I suspect a Filter'tron in the bridge position of a Strat would sound amazing.

I once built a Thinline Tele with P90s. I had specced the body out for P90s but bought a Filter'tron sized pickguard as well to try Filters if I wanted, and sure enough the P90s didn't do it for me. Installed the Filter'trons (they fit into a P90 rout with room at each end) and wow - that guitar really came to life.

I really like what you do with your guitars. It's so cool to see someone do it for themselves rather than just buy whatever CS Fender they find. Nothing wrong with that of course - I just like seeing what us normal people do!
Click to expand...
I love the idea of a Filterton in the bridge! I'm actually also toying with building a Cabronita style Tele. Which is how my P90 Tele body started.
I over-routed the Filtertron routes for P90's.

GFS has a lot of different color Cabronita style bodies for 2x 'Trons. Unfortunately no "50's blonde" or Mary Kaye white.
 
I guess it's that I really like the Strat tremolo and a Strat with regular pickups doesn't do it for me. I LOVE Filter'trons. It was really interesting hearing the difference between P90s and Filter'trons in my Tele Thinline. It was a Warmoth Ash body and a Fender Tele neck. The P90s sounded perfectly fine but not so different from regular Tele pickups. Maybe it was just that body? When I put the Filter'trons in it really came to life. Filter'trons have a complexity to the sound which I love. Particularly in the bridge position, where they have a fabulous quack to them. At the same time they can be very tight and twangy while having beautiful mids. That sound with a Strat tremolo bridge could be something. They also have a surprising amount of low end, unlike a normal Strat bridge pickup.

BTW I am really interested to see how you go with dulling the finish on this guitar. I am a big fan of the Gibson VOS thing - sort-of an old guitar look without the damage. Once a guitar is shiny it must be difficult to unshiny it without the marks showing.
 
I love the sound of Tron's as well. Just not too sure if I want that in a Strat.

I've always hated the sound of a Strat bridge pickup too until I discovered two things. First was the Lollar "Special S" pickups. These are a little hotter wound but not super hot (7.6k DC) I've used this pickup in my current Strat and the Tele version in both of my Tele's. This has really opened the door for me on using the bridge pickup on a Strat. They're fatter and hotter, as expected but most importantly, they have "character" which is something missing in most overwound Strat bridge pickups to me.

The second thing I discovered was the Eric Johnson Strat wiring. (It's not exclusive to him, other people use it as well) But it puts the bridge on its own dedicated tone control and uses a .01 or .015 tone cap. The middle pickup by passes the tone stack and is wired directly to the switch.
Master volume. The .015 rolls off the treble a little slower and gives you a wider sweep and range of tone roll off and you can pre set the bridge to where it sounds the best. Rolled all the way down you can get into that warm tone that EJ favors. I usually have mine set around 50% ish on the bridge pickup. You can hear how this sounds in my Pink Floyd pedal demo. The last solo is played on my Strat bridge pickup (Lollar Special S), tone rolled off about 50% through my Gnat Fuzz. You can really hear the harmonics jumping out (or trying to jump out). That's mostly the pickup doing that. Same with the earlier solo with the Lollar P90's.

The upper tone control is for the neck only. In the middle pickup position it acts as a "blow switch" if you want a full bore solo sound.
 
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HamishR said:
I guess it's that I really like the Strat tremolo and a Strat with regular pickups doesn't do it for me. I LOVE Filter'trons. It was really interesting hearing the difference between P90s and Filter'trons in my Tele Thinline. It was a Warmoth Ash body and a Fender Tele neck. The P90s sounded perfectly fine but not so different from regular Tele pickups. Maybe it was just that body? When I put the Filter'trons in it really came to life. Filter'trons have a complexity to the sound which I love. Particularly in the bridge position, where they have a fabulous quack to them. At the same time they can be very tight and twangy while having beautiful mids. That sound with a Strat tremolo bridge could be something. They also have a surprising amount of low end, unlike a normal Strat bridge pickup.

BTW I am really interested to see how you go with dulling the finish on this guitar. I am a big fan of the Gibson VOS thing - sort-of an old guitar look without the damage. Once a guitar is shiny it must be difficult to unshiny it without the marks showing.
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There's definitely still some marks, but they look more like "handling" marks than scotchbrite orbital marks, which kinda looked like pubic hairs.
Right now it looks like it's got some scuffs from just playing it. Which is sort of what I was going for. I don't think I want to take the finish down any further and risk burn through. It's pretty thin.
 
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