MichaelW
Well-known member
Here she is hanging next to her sisters, Goldie, Blondie, Red and Burstie. (Ms. Gold Foils is back in the closet for a cycle).
So the backstory is that I didn't need another Strat, heck I need to lose some guitars period. Really struggling with the lack of space here at the new house.
So how the heck did I wind up with a net plus 1? I dunno.....heh.
"Blackie" is actually has a specific purpose (beyond giving me joy playing it). As most of you know, I'm a bit of a pickup whore. As much as I've got my Strats pretty dialed in in terms of pickups, I'm ALWAYS interested in trying something new.
This kinda got supercharged when @RetiredUnit1 mentioned his eBay seller "guitarmadness". I've been spending way too much time on his eBay store.
I've bought a few sets of pickups and have really been pleasantly surprised at how good some of them sound.
I intend to do some demo's of said pickups as well as some pedal build reports when I have enough energy to do it.
Anyway, back to Blackie. The purpose behind another strat is that I "needed" a crash test dummy strat to try new pickups without tearing into my "good" guitars all the time. The body is an Allen Eden Paulownia body off eBay. The neck is a spare neck that was also an eBay neck that was on a guitar at some point. But I swapped it out. I tried to make this guitar as much as possible out of recycled parts in my parts bin.
I'm really quite impressed with this strat body. I tried an Allen Eden body some years ago and it was such a mess I returned it. Seems like they've got a new body blank supplier as these are cut a lot better and the poly finish is thinner.
Paulownia can be pretty light wood and this one came in a tad under 3 lbs. I think it's an excellent tone wood that kinda falls somewhere between Alder and Swamp ash. Maybe closest to Poplar which I also like a lot for a tone wood even though both Paulownia and Poplar seem to be regulated to the "budget wood" category.
Some builders like John Suhr use Paulownia on their nosebleed expensive guitars, so I get the feeling the "industry" doesn't quite know what to do with it yet.
I had vintage white, black and mint green pickguards to choose from but decided to start with the black one. My plan is to have a couple of loaded pickguards when I want to check out some new pickups and just swap them out. @Guardians of the analog says I just want to be David Gilmour heh.
Trying something new with the wiring. I've burnt out a few pots with too many pickup swaps and heating up the back of the pots for ground point. So I made myself a couple of "off pot" grounding points so these pots can withstand more pickup swaps. Stupid simple idea that hadn't thought of before. But I like it so much that I'm going to start using it in all my builds.
The only issue I ran into with this body was that neck pocket was cut too small. Not just finish build up but like 2-3mm too small for any of the necks I had.
I wound up having to carefully Dremel out a bit more room. I still chipped the finish right at the thin part of the pocket. Good thing about black guitars is that a black sharpie can hide a lot....
I didn't have a matching set of knobs, but I think I'm going to leave these the way they are for some "character" heh.
The last thing I needed came in late last night. I used a cheap MusicLilly tremolo with a brass block. I had a set of Callaham steel saddles that went into this.
So I got her all buttoned up this morning with the first set of pickups I'm testing. I'll post about the pickups under another thread when I can get something recorded.
I've got a couple of sets of Strat pickups coming from BootStrap and I might grab another set of ToneHatch pickups.
Here she is all done.
You can't tell from this pic but one of the reasons I "retired" this neck first time around was because I shot too thick a coat of lacquer on the headstock and it checked.
continued in next post....
So the backstory is that I didn't need another Strat, heck I need to lose some guitars period. Really struggling with the lack of space here at the new house.
So how the heck did I wind up with a net plus 1? I dunno.....heh.
"Blackie" is actually has a specific purpose (beyond giving me joy playing it). As most of you know, I'm a bit of a pickup whore. As much as I've got my Strats pretty dialed in in terms of pickups, I'm ALWAYS interested in trying something new.
This kinda got supercharged when @RetiredUnit1 mentioned his eBay seller "guitarmadness". I've been spending way too much time on his eBay store.
I've bought a few sets of pickups and have really been pleasantly surprised at how good some of them sound.
I intend to do some demo's of said pickups as well as some pedal build reports when I have enough energy to do it.
Anyway, back to Blackie. The purpose behind another strat is that I "needed" a crash test dummy strat to try new pickups without tearing into my "good" guitars all the time. The body is an Allen Eden Paulownia body off eBay. The neck is a spare neck that was also an eBay neck that was on a guitar at some point. But I swapped it out. I tried to make this guitar as much as possible out of recycled parts in my parts bin.
I'm really quite impressed with this strat body. I tried an Allen Eden body some years ago and it was such a mess I returned it. Seems like they've got a new body blank supplier as these are cut a lot better and the poly finish is thinner.
Paulownia can be pretty light wood and this one came in a tad under 3 lbs. I think it's an excellent tone wood that kinda falls somewhere between Alder and Swamp ash. Maybe closest to Poplar which I also like a lot for a tone wood even though both Paulownia and Poplar seem to be regulated to the "budget wood" category.
Some builders like John Suhr use Paulownia on their nosebleed expensive guitars, so I get the feeling the "industry" doesn't quite know what to do with it yet.
I had vintage white, black and mint green pickguards to choose from but decided to start with the black one. My plan is to have a couple of loaded pickguards when I want to check out some new pickups and just swap them out. @Guardians of the analog says I just want to be David Gilmour heh.
Trying something new with the wiring. I've burnt out a few pots with too many pickup swaps and heating up the back of the pots for ground point. So I made myself a couple of "off pot" grounding points so these pots can withstand more pickup swaps. Stupid simple idea that hadn't thought of before. But I like it so much that I'm going to start using it in all my builds.
The only issue I ran into with this body was that neck pocket was cut too small. Not just finish build up but like 2-3mm too small for any of the necks I had.
I wound up having to carefully Dremel out a bit more room. I still chipped the finish right at the thin part of the pocket. Good thing about black guitars is that a black sharpie can hide a lot....
I didn't have a matching set of knobs, but I think I'm going to leave these the way they are for some "character" heh.
The last thing I needed came in late last night. I used a cheap MusicLilly tremolo with a brass block. I had a set of Callaham steel saddles that went into this.
So I got her all buttoned up this morning with the first set of pickups I'm testing. I'll post about the pickups under another thread when I can get something recorded.
I've got a couple of sets of Strat pickups coming from BootStrap and I might grab another set of ToneHatch pickups.
Here she is all done.
You can't tell from this pic but one of the reasons I "retired" this neck first time around was because I shot too thick a coat of lacquer on the headstock and it checked.
continued in next post....
Keep on rockin' MW
