Strat appreciation thread

SillyOctpuss

SillyOctpuss

Well-known member
After seeing @fig's lovely limited American professional I want to see what other nice strats are out there. Don't worry I don't discriminate as long as it's a strat shaped object go ahead and post it. I don't mind if there's humbuckers, p90s, hard tails, lipsticks or whatever go ahead and post it... But no Floyds!!!

Only kidding, post away if there's a floyd.

I'll start with a guitar which started as an experiment and has slowly become my number 1 over the last few years. It was a present from my inlaws a Fender deluxe players strat which was fun for a few weeks but just not me. so I went back to my humbuckers and it lived in a case. Over the next few years I traded, sold and upgraded everything on it apart from the body and in the end... It still wasn't for me so I sold it... Then immediately regretted it because it was a gift. Oh well you live and learn.

Fast forward about 6 years and I had moved from Ireland to England for work. I was bored out of my mind in a meeting discreetly scanning gumtree (our version of craigs list) and I see a familiar body. I zoom in on the pics and yup that's my guitar 6 years after I sold it and about 3 miles away from where I currently live in a different country wtf!

Queue weird email conversation for the seller and a trip down that night to pick it up. I only wanted the body so sold everything else and spent 6 months collecting parts for my perfect strat.

I ended up with

USACG 63 profile neck with a dark rosewood board and callaham dots.
Gotoh tuners
Earvana nut
Mojo special strat pups - alnico iii
Wudtone trem

I sent it down to the guys at Feline guitars in London for a full setup, fret work, new nut - the whole works and got back a guitar which blew me away. Over the last three years it's basically become my go to guitar and I wouldn't be without it now. It's also my toddlers fav guitar which you'll see in the pics below. He thinks it's delicious :-)

Things I still need to do

1) needs a logo. I don't want to put fender but it needs something
2) headstock needs to be reshaped from USACG headstock shape to traditional strat shape. I'll have this done when I have the logo fitted.

Sorry for the waffling and if you made it through my rambling thanks for reading my strat confession :-)
 

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Absolutely ancient photo, but it’s the only one I can grab at the moment:
https://imgur.com/OVDMFyE
The first guitar I ever built, way back in middle school (took a few years to save up for everything, so I finished it in my first year of high school)— my very own Frankenstrat
-Musikraft ‘Franky’ neck and body
-Floyd Rose “1984” with D-Tuna and a 42mm brass block
-EVH “Frankenstein” humbucker
-JBM Guitars “Replicator” single coil (still super bummed that they closed up shop years ago— it’s the best sounding Strat neck pickup I’ve ever heard!)
-Schaller M6 mini tuners
-500K volume pot (push/pull bridge/neck pickup selection)
It’s a heavy bastard— weighing in at around 13 lbs iirc. The body wasn’t even super heavy (as far as northern ash goes— not exactly light either at just shy of 5 lbs) but all of the metal bits add up! Quite a big difference from my one danelectro that’s only 2lbs 14oz altogether.

I’ll try to find pics of my other two strats a bit later.
 
Why you gotta do this to me? I've been debating a new strat for a couple months but probably shouldn't spend the money. Now I gotta look at all y'all's strats...

Below is my only strat. It's a Korean made Squier strat with a plywood body. It was candy apple red and I refinished it in a satin nitro a couple years ago. It's got fender noiseless pickups and I really love how it sounds, but I'm realizing that I hate the fretboard radius and the neck shape. The neck is really flat and wide. My closest fitting radius gauge says it's a 16" radius- horrible for thumb-over chord stuff, which is all I want to do if I'm playing a strat. It being an odd duck, I doubt I can find a replacement neck that would fit. I don't really play strats enough to warrant getting a whole different guitar either so I'm trying to just live with it.
Screenshot_20210710-152625-817.png
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
Absolutely ancient photo, but it’s the only one I can grab at the moment:
https://imgur.com/OVDMFyE
The first guitar I ever built, way back in middle school (took a few years to save up for everything, so I finished it in my first year of high school)— my very own Frankenstrat
-Musikraft ‘Franky’ neck and body
-Floyd Rose “1984” with D-Tuna and a 42mm brass block
-EVH “Frankenstein” humbucker
-JBM Guitars “Replicator” single coil (still super bummed that they closed up shop years ago— it’s the best sounding Strat neck pickup I’ve ever heard!)
-Schaller M6 mini tuners
-500K volume pot (push/pull bridge/neck pickup selection)
It’s a heavy bastard— weighing in at around 13 lbs iirc. The body wasn’t even super heavy (as far as northern ash goes— not exactly light either at just shy of 5 lbs) but all of the metal bits add up! Quite a big difference from my one danelectro that’s only 2lbs 14oz altogether.

I’ll try to find pics of my other two strats a bit later.
Click to expand...
Wow dude 13lbs! I played a 12lbs les paul once and that was a weighty beast. It's fookin cool though I love it. Easily 4thumbs up

My strat weighs in around 7.5lbs it's an ash body as well.
 
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SillyOctpuss said:
Wow dude 13lbs! I played a 12lbs les paul once and that was a weighty beast. It's fookin cool though I love it. Easily 4thumbs up

My strat weighs in around 7.5lbs it's an ash body as well.
Click to expand...
Yeah! It’s hefty— northern ash (which is what the original frankenstrat was made of) is quite a bit denser than the swamp ash that’s typically used for ash-bodied guitars. I think my main Strat is around 6lb 9oz (though that’ll be more when I finally get it put back together since the mods were pretty extensive) and my Hardtail HH Strat (a semi-unintentional Rivers Cuomo tribute) is around 7lb 6oz or so
 
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Bricksnbeatles said:
Yeah! It’s hefty— northern ash (which is what the original frankenstrat was made of) is quite a bit denser than the swamp ash that’s typically used for ash-bodied guitars. I think my main Strat is around 6lb 9oz (though that’ll be more when I finally get it put back together since the mods were pretty extensive) and my Hardtail HH Strat (a semi-unintentional Rivers Cuomo tribute) is around 7lb 6oz or so
Click to expand...
What mods are you doing to your main strat?
 
Harry Klippton said:
Why you gotta do this to me? I've been debating a new strat for a couple months but probably shouldn't spend the money. Now I gotta look at all y'all's strats...

Below is my only strat. It's a Korean made Squier strat with a plywood body. It was candy apple red and I refinished it in a satin nitro a couple years ago. It's got fender noiseless pickups and I really love how it sounds, but I'm realizing that I hate the fretboard radius and the neck shape. The neck is really flat and wide. My closest fitting radius gauge says it's a 16" radius- horrible for thumb-over chord stuff, which is all I want to do if I'm playing a strat. It being an odd duck, I doubt I can find a replacement neck that would fit. I don't really play strats enough to warrant getting a whole different guitar either so I'm trying to just live with it.
View attachment 13509
Click to expand...
Is that daphne blue or sonic blue @Harry Klippton? I like it whichever it is
 
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SillyOctpuss said:
What mods are you doing to your main strat?
Click to expand...
So it all started when the vibrato arm’s threads stripped out in the stock block—
I got a Calaham steel block and arm to replace it, since I love the way it’s got the delrin insert to prevent wobble and metal fatigue.
while I was at it replacing that though, I figured I might as well rewire it a bit too:
-J taper 250k volume pot (i think it’s J— I can’t remember now. Essentially halfway between a linear and log taper; like 30% resistance at halfway instead of the 50% of linear or the 15% of a standard logarithmic pot) which I feel is best taper for an even volume reduction across the pot’s travel.
-250k no load tone pots for both tone controls. It came stock with one on the middle/bridge tone control, but I wanted it on both because I find that to be an interesting tool when you’re using vintage style fuzz pedals that pickup radio stations when the volume knob is rolled all the way down, as well as when doing the Gilmour seagull effect thing (I won’t say more, try it for yourself) 😉
- Freeway 10-position blade switch: it adds all of the other pickup selections that I’d normally achieve via push/pulls or mini toggles
-three recessed toggle switches in the area between the knobs and the blade switch:
1) a dpdt on-on switch wired as a phase switch for the middle pickup. Especially useful when the bridge and middle pickup are wired in series with each other, with the neck pickup in parallel.
2) a dpdt on-on-on switch wired to allow three different capacitor values for the first tone knob
3) a dpdt on-on-on switch wired to allow two different capacitor values or an inductor (for a high pass filter) for the second tone knob
- a dpdt on-on-on switch between the two tone knobs wired to allocate the two tone knobs to two different pickups (1/2= N/M; N/B; M/B)

the only reason I haven’t put it back together (after two years of it being apart) is because I haven’t found the time to mill the slots for the recessed mini toggles in the final pickguard

Well before that, I replaced the vintage style stamped saddles with Highwood Saddles, which are an absolutely brilliant and necessary upgrade for any fan of vintage style saddles who hates getting jabbed by the height screws
 
Very cool @Bricksnbeatles. The wudtone trem fitted to mine uses highwood saddles as well.

I've got a tele which I've had the parts for for three years now. I need to find time to get it down to the guys at feline to finish it off. I'll do most things to my guitars setup wise but always leave nut work and fretwork to someone who knows what they're actually doing and have all the right tools.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
Mysterious and artsy. I like it. What's the specs for those of us who want to nerd out?

I'm regretting not going more artistic with one of my shots... Give me a mo
Click to expand...
I think I bought it new in 2001, it's back to all original parts now except for the trem block. I did have Custon 54 pickups in it, but they didn't really do it for me at the time… it might be worth trying them again as they are in a spare pick guard so easy to pop in.

From the time I bought the strat until October last year I basically had the same tired repertoire of a handful tunes, then I found TrueFire and feel like I’m making progress, all be it slowly, but it really has helped invigorate my love of playing and learning.

The pedal building came about because a few years a go a got a looper pedal to try and inject something new into my playing, and to try and shift me away from falling back on the same old tunes… the looper was great, but then I realised I needed new tones so that I could ‘cough’ solo over the glorious multilayered rhythm track I’d put down, all with impeccable timing naturally! I picked up a TC mojo mojo cheap, but that didn’t suit me, so I ordered a tube-screamer kit (not PedalPCB), one with loads of mods on switches, I hated it, then I ordered a JanRay clone PCB and that was much better, but that started me down a rabbit hole! Funnily enough I now have a TS808 clone on my board, the original kit was, how should I put this, the tone and gain pots were the wrong tapers and I think there was a bit of monkeying around with the capacitor values too.

Sorry for the digression, back to the Strat, why the strat? My guitars heroes were mostly associated with the strat, it’s the sound I have in my head although never seem to totally nail, I’ve had an Epiphone Les Paul and Casio in the past, but have decided to stick with just one guitar and see if I can get so comfortable with it that the music flows through me and out of the guitar. But I do have a love hate relationship with it, I don’t find it the most comfortable guitar to play, but I think that is part of what makes a strat a strat!
 
Flying said:
I think I bought it new in 2001, it's back to all original parts now except for the trem block. I did have Custon 54 pickups in it, but they didn't really do it for me at the time… it might be worth trying them again as they are in a spare pick guard so easy to pop in.

From the time I bought the strat until October last year I basically had the same tired repertoire of a handful tunes, then I found TrueFire and feel like I’m making progress, all be it slowly, but it really has helped invigorate my love of playing and learning.

The pedal building came about because a few years a go a got a looper pedal to try and inject something new into my playing, and to try and shift me away from falling back on the same old tunes… the looper was great, but then I realised I needed new tones so that I could ‘cough’ solo over the glorious multilayered rhythm track I’d put down, all with impeccable timing naturally! I picked up a TC mojo mojo cheap, but that didn’t suit me, so I ordered a tube-screamer kit (not PedalPCB), one with loads of mods on switches, I hated it, then I ordered a JanRay clone PCB and that was much better, but that started me down a rabbit hole! Funnily enough I now have a TS808 clone on my board, the original kit was, how should I put this, the tone and gain pots were the wrong tapers and I think there was a bit of monkeying around with the capacitor values too.

Sorry for the digression, back to the Strat, why the strat? My guitars heroes were mostly associated with the strat, it’s the sound I have in my head although never seem to totally nail, I’ve had an Epiphone Les Paul and Casio in the past, but have decided to stick with just one guitar and see if I can get so comfortable with it that the music flows through me and out of the guitar. But I do have a love hate relationship with it, I don’t find it the most comfortable guitar to play, but I think that is part of what makes a strat a strat!
Click to expand...
Is it a 50s classic player?
 
I write all that and forget to say what it is :oops:

It’s an American Series, I think I got it a year or two after they stopped making the American Standard. It comes in at exactly 8lb.
 
I thought it was a roadworn but was thrown by the neck. I'm a big fan of partscasters though I usually get them finished off by the guys at feline guitars in London so I know the frets/nut etc are spot on. I don't mind routing out for pickups or wiring or general setup work but nkt fretwork or nuts.

It looks lovely btw.
 
88’ American Strat, just body and bridge are left from the original guitar. Had lots of different pickup configurations but come back to a single bridge pickup most often as I prefer simple—currently a Super Distortion. Warmoth Boatneck neck replaced original when hand pain with smaller necks became a problem.

Marshall JCM800 2204 on a 1969 Marshall 4x12 with some Weber 30 watt Greenbacks.
3B418037-1DA8-4DB3-B5A8-8A685AA62697.jpeg
 
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