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

SillyOctpuss said:
Checkout crimson guitars stunning stains and finishing oils. They seem to have a higher success rate than the wudtone kits with anyone I know who's used them in the UK. They have a range of different finish options on there.

www.crimsonguitars.com

Search: 21 results found for "Oil"

Crimson Guitars, based in Dorset, is the premier UK manufacturer of both production and bespoke guitars to the highest of standards. We also manufacture a range of fine luthiers tools and have the largest purpose built guitar building school in the world.
www.crimsonguitars.com www.crimsonguitars.com
Click to expand...
@SillyOctpuss Well I think you were right. I got one of the Wudtone neck finishing kits. I started with the first color coat yesterday and so far I’m not impressed. Giving it the recommended 24 hrs to cure then decide if I’m going to sand it back or keep going. I used the “aged vintage yellow” color kit on the Mighty Mite neck. Sanded the poly finish off the neck. It came off pretty easily, was a very thin finish.
 
I've had pretty good luck with the Wudtone stuff so give it a chance. By the time you 2 or 3 coats in it should be looking pretty cool.
 
MichaelW said:
@SillyOctpuss Well I think you were right. I got one of the Wudtone neck finishing kits. I started with the first color coat yesterday and so far I’m not impressed. Giving it the recommended 24 hrs to cure then decide if I’m going to sand it back or keep going. I used the “aged vintage yellow” color kit on the Mighty Mite neck. Sanded the poly finish off the neck. It came off pretty easily, was a very thin finish.
Click to expand...
I've been told you really need to rub the finish into the grain with wudtone rather than a wipe on approach of a typical stain.

Good luck @MichaelW I hope it works out
 
SillyOctpuss said:
I've been told you really need to rub the finish into the grain with wudtone rather than a wipe on approach of a typical stain.

Good luck @MichaelW I hope it works out
Click to expand...
I'll give that a try when I apply the next few coats. I just didn't like the way the stain seeped into some parts of the grain deeper. It's hanging in the garage and I haven't looked at it yet today. Maybe it cured a bit better. I'll go check it out.
 
MichaelW said:
I'll give that a try when I apply the next few coats. I just didn't like the way the stain seeped into some parts of the grain deeper. It's hanging in the garage and I haven't looked at it yet today. Maybe it cured a bit better. I'll go check it out.
Click to expand...
Let us know how you get on. Unfortunately my wudtone knowledge is all second hand from other people who have used it. My only hands on experience with wudtone is their strat trem.

Edit - Actually we need to be pretty careful. I've just realised how many times we've said Wudtone. Andy from Wudtone has a habit of turning up and spamming the shit out of forums if you say 'that name' too much. It's a bit like the Candyman but spammier
 
Ok, I just checked the neck. It might be just the way the grain is on this headstock, it's the only area that's showing the "seepage" from the Oden-Tune color coats.

I'm going to keep going, just put another color coat on. I was planning to do a waterslide headstock decal then finishing it off with gloss nitro anyway once the "oden-tune" top coats cure. I might just get a can of tinted nitro for that.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
Good to know. Like I said I've not used it yet. I know a few builders in the UK who all recommended their stuff for ease of use at home scenarios and warned me off the wudtone finishes (that was my first option).

As I said I do love their strat bridge though. The quality's excellent and it's easily the smoothest strat trem I've ever used. I've been dithering over trying one on my prs for ages but it's a lot of money for an experiment on a guitar I already love.
Click to expand...
The only trem equipped guitar I have has their Holy Grail bridge, with a brass block and HW saddles. When I ordered it, after he shipped it, I got an apology from him that he was switching to the HW saddles rather than his own, and had forgotten to mention this to me— but could send me some of his if I wanted them. I replied that I had planned on switching to HW anyway. I think it’s the best take on a vintage Strat trem.
 
Alan W said:
The only trem equipped guitar I have has their Holy Grail bridge, with a brass block and HW saddles. When I ordered it, after he shipped it, I got an apology from him that he was switching to the HW saddles rather than his own, and had forgotten to mention this to me— but could send me some of his if I wanted them. I replied that I had planned on switching to HW anyway. I think it’s the best take on a vintage Strat trem.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's easily the best I've used. I'm using the Holy grail too but with the steel block on mine and tbh have no idea which saddles are on it. I'll have to check.

Edit- Just checked and I've got the Wudtone branded saddles on mine.
 
Last edited:
SillyOctpuss said:
Yeah it's easily the best I've used. I'm using the Holy grail too but with the steel block on mine and tbh have no idea which saddles are on it. I'll have to check.

Edit- Just checked and I've got the Wudtone branded saddles on mine.
Click to expand...
I went for the brass, but not from any strong view point—just aware of how "musical" brass resonance is, but... I have read various articles trying to compare different metals in the block, and other than the sense that pot metal is to be avoided, the affect on sound, while I'm positive that it's part of the mix, is probably pretty trivial. I have a Warwick bass that uses their proprietary bell brass frets, and feel the same way about those. (Although they look great when polished; but being brass, dull relatively fast.) I had gone for about 15 years without a term guitar, and have not been surprised that I end up not really using it—but I do have it set floating, with 4 of his springs, and do occasionally screw the arm in and use it. The way I have it is stiff enough not to mess up string bends, but I still get that added Strat spring resonance added, which is just the way I want it. Maybe someday I'll work whammy into my playing style, but for now, it's really just for some songs that call for the effect, rather than subtle warbles, which I manage with my hand. I doubt there any sound difference in the saddles, more the non-sticking out set screws thing.
 
Alan W said:
I went for the brass, but not from any strong view point—just aware of how "musical" brass resonance is, but... I have read various articles trying to compare different metals in the block, and other than the sense that pot metal is to be avoided, the affect on sound, while I'm positive that it's part of the mix, is probably pretty trivial. I have a Warwick bass that uses their proprietary bell brass frets, and feel the same way about those. (Although they look great when polished; but being brass, dull relatively fast.) I had gone for about 15 years without a term guitar, and have not been surprised that I end up not really using it—but I do have it set floating, with 4 of his springs, and do occasionally screw the arm in and use it. The way I have it is stiff enough not to mess up string bends, but I still get that added Strat spring resonance added, which is just the way I want it. Maybe someday I'll work whammy into my playing style, but for now, it's really just for some songs that call for the effect, rather than subtle warbles, which I manage with my hand. I doubt there any sound difference in the saddles, more the non-sticking out set screws thing.
Click to expand...

I bought mine second hand from a guy who'd got it for a project but never used it. He sold the guitar before he got round to installing it so mine is the standard setup with vintage spacing and a steel block.
As to the difference in sound I'd like to hear it compared on the same guitar, I recently had an experience of swopping the gotoh saddles on my tele from titanium to brass and couldn't believe how different it was. I was expecting a small acoustic change and was surprised that it changed both the unplugged and amplified tone. I realised I preferred the titanium but decided to live with the brass to see how my perception changed as I got used to it. My wife is learning to play and using my her telecaster to do it, she grabbed it one night to do another video lesson and popped her head back in to ask what was wrong with her tele, she said it sounded weird and wanted to know if this meant the strings needed to be changed. I hadn't told her I'd changed anything and she hadn't noticed the different colour of the saddles until I pointed it out.

The wudtone's an excellent trem though, very smooth and very stable. The callaham I had on the guitar before it sounded more brittle with a high end that I really didn't like.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
I bought mine second hand from a guy who'd got it for a project but never used it. He sold the guitar before he got round to installing it so mine is the standard setup with vintage spacing and a steel block.
As to the difference in sound I'd like to hear it compared on the same guitar, I recently had an experience of swopping the gotoh saddles on my tele from titanium to brass and couldn't believe how different it was. I was expecting a small acoustic change and was surprised that it changed both the unplugged and amplified tone. I realised I preferred the titanium but decided to live with the brass to see how my perception changed as I got used to it. My wife is learning to play and using my her telecaster to do it, she grabbed it one night to do another video lesson and popped her head back in to ask what was wrong with her tele, she said it sounded weird and wanted to know if this meant the strings needed to be changed. I hadn't told her I'd changed anything and she hadn't noticed the different colour of the saddles until I pointed it out.

The wudtone's an excellent trem though, very smooth and very stable. The callaham I had on the guitar before it sounded more brittle with a high end that I really didn't like.
Click to expand...
I fully agree about the need to isolate any changes, and also allowing some time to assimilate changes.

I’ve been curious about titanium bridge parts. Almost every report I’ve read has been very positive. I have a Gotoh bridge on my Baritone Tele (really all Warmoth), that has the solid cast saddles. Pretty sure they’re brass, since they are plated. I’m really thrilled with the current sound, but am certainly open to experimenting. I may look into the titanium saddles.

Yes, I‘ve also been very happy with the tuning stability of the Wudtone.
 
Alan W said:
The only trem equipped guitar I have has their Holy Grail bridge, with a brass block and HW saddles. When I ordered it, after he shipped it, I got an apology from him that he was switching to the HW saddles rather than his own, and had forgotten to mention this to me— but could send me some of his if I wanted them. I replied that I had planned on switching to HW anyway. I think it’s the best take on a vintage Strat trem.
Click to expand...
I have 3 sets if Highwood saddles, one is waiting for a guitar to go in, might be this one:) It's one of those "Duhhhh.......what a great idea and why hadn't anyone thought of this before??". Since switching over to them I can't stand playing a regular set of Strat saddles anymore. And they SOUND fabulous.
 
A couple of update pics on the Mighty Mite neck and Woden-tune neck finishing kit.

This is after 2 color coats, and a bit of cursing, re-sanding. Took a couple of tries to get the headstock to take the color coats evenly. I ended up using the whole bottle of color, so maybe 5 coats total.

One issue was my technique, I tried rubbing it hard into the grain and that worked for the first coat. Then I finished by "dragging" lightly with a bit of rag soaked in the color. Let it pool unevenly then when it dried carefully evening it out with 0000 wool pad.

The second issue is that this neck came with a satin poly finish that I took off. I really should have held out and got a raw neck. Sanding the poly finish off was easy enough but invariably there's some finish left in the grain that you can't get out without taking off wood and I didn't want to do that. So that also contributed to the color not going on as evenly as I'd have liked.

Just started with the top coats, I'm on my second coat. They recommend 2-3 days of curing between top coats. So it's slow going.

IMG_3735.JPG

IMG_3736.JPG

IMG_3737.JPG

After chatting with Andy a bit at Oden-Town about the best way to apply a headstock decal and use a nitro top coat he recommended after 2 coats of his top coat to use my typical process. Which is to mist the headstock with nitrocellulose lacquer, apply the water slide decal, then build up maybe 5-6 coats of lacquer then wet sand and buff. He also recommended once done with that to apply another coat of top coat so the finish looks even with the rest of the neck. So that's next after this layer of top coat cures.

All in all, the neck finishing kit is interesting. I'm liking how it looks and feels. And it's dead easy. Like doing a wipe on poly finish.
 
The colour looks really nice @MichaelW. I'm surprised that you can apply another coat of wudtone over the cured nitro, I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to do that.

If anyone's going to know though it's going to be Andy.
 
Yah, that's what he suggested. We'll see how it works out. Good thing about it is I can always sand it back off if I don't like it:)
 
The color looks better but it still looks uneven to me.
I think the issue was the fact that it had a finish on it already. Whatever satin poly they used filled the pores and grain and is tough to get back out.

This is just having applied the waterslide decal. No top coats yet, starting that tomorrow.

It's got 2 coats of the Wudtone on and a light mist coat of nitro under the decal right now.

I'm planning 12 coats of nitro. Probably 3 coats a day for 2 days, then let it cure for a week then some light drying sanding with 800 grit then 3 more light coats, another round of sanding, then the final 3 coats will be wet coats.

Then the hard part....it needs 3-4 weeks of cure before the final wetsand and buff out. Good thing I don't have any other parts for this project besides the body hahaha. This is usually when I bail because I'm impatient and go with TruOil which can all be done in about 2 weeks start to finish..

If this turns out well I'm planning to refinish the neck on my P90 Tele build. I'm not happy with the headstock decal and not completely happy with the feel of the neck. And it's just too "white".......(hahaha that wasn't meant to be as racist as it sounded.....:)

IMG_3823.JPG

The P90 Tele headstock.....this is what happens when you have zero patience.....and want to finish the guitar and get to playing heh.
Also what happens when you buy all the parts ahead of time......

img_3172-jpg.28223
 
Ok, I'm calling this done.

I did not let it cure the 3 weeks I probably should have. But I wound up putting about 12 coats of nitro on but kept having to sand it back with 800 to deal with blush with the humidity here this past week. After the last round of "Ah crap, gotta sand it back" it was actually looking pretty good with the build up, so I tentatively went ahead and wet sanded up to 2000 grit and hand buffed it to a "closet classic" type of shine. I was not going for the "brand new mirror finish" but more of an aged look.
Had a wee bit of burn through on the slab rosewood ramp, but I can spot fix that.

And before you know it, bob's your uncle, I was done. I wasn't expecting to be hahah.
I still want to put a couple more coats of the Wudtone top coats on the back of the neck and then let cure for a solid couple of weeks before final polish with some pure carnauba.

Can't say I was wowed with the Wudtone neck kit but I learned a few things about applying it on this neck. I might try it again with my Tele P90 Allparts neck.

IMG_3870.JPG

IMG_3869.JPG
And
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top