Guitars and Life

No sooner is it started but it's finished! The strat upgrade is done! Some pics to run through the work.  We'd left it last time with all the components fitted onto the scratchplate but nothing wired up.  It is half term week from my course giving me a couple of days where weather and waiting in for a heating engineer meant I had a clear few hours on the bench (i.e. dining room table suitably covered with rugs, old t-shirts, etc.) Here is the start of the wiring - some of the wiring for the pots and switches done. Here with the pickups connected up - There is actually a simple but major error on here that I spotted later... Here she is naked - stripped of all the hardware I was replacing, i.e. bridge saddles, tuners, strap buttons, scratchplate and backplate. Dignity being restored with tuners, saddles and strap locks installed. A close up of the saddles.  I can't say how much if at all they improved the sound as clearly in this rebuild I ...

I have another guitar project underway.  Using some money I got for my birthday I bought a cheap second hand Squier Strat off a local instrument sell/swap noticeboard on Facebook. Here is the guitar I got - an affinity Squier strat.  Nice colour I thought and very clean.  Previous owner had it as a spare to a "real one" as he called it and wasn't using it much.  I negotiated a cash purchase and a little discount from his asking price.  All cool.  The plan all along was one I've had in my head for a while to buy a cheap but reasonable Strat copy and upgrade it a bit... well a lot actually. So the plan is to replace all the electrics in it.  I wanted a sort of Dave Murray Strat like idea with strat sized humbuckers in it.  However Dave's guitar if you buy his latest Fender signature offering is north of £700 (which is good value actually given the hardware you get on it) but also a bit of a no-no for me features a Floyd Rose vibrato. ...