Squier Stratocaster Upgrade Plans Mk 1

[thekiwidisciple]

Hi all,

How are we? I've got a Squier Affinity strat in need of some love. The neck on it is a tad thin for my taste. Also, I don't want to take my Warmoth Tele to gigs, it's worth far too much sentimentally to me to risk having it broken or stolen. So this is the plan for the strat:

New neck: Made by B Hefner. SRV back contour, 12" radius, Pao Ferro fretboard, vintage tint nitro finish.
New pickguard: I've already got this, it's red pearl. (Think Doyle Bramhall's red strat :D)
New pickups. ATM, it has Tonerider City Limits pickups in it at the moment. I'm going to put in something more vintage. I'm thinking either Tonerider Vintage pickups, Fender Vintage Noiseless (good for gigs in venues with shit grounding) or maybe taking another page out of DBII's book and going for some Van Zandt Vintage Plus pickups. Opinions on any of these?
Locking Gotoh vintage tuners. Can anyone say :D?
Guitar Fetish replacement trem system. The Squier one is average...Will have pics as I get things happening. :)

[deeaa]

Uhm, so why don't you just also get a new body and ditch the Squier altogether? I mean, the body is all you're using off the Squier, right? So wouldn't it make more sense to sell the squier and just build the thing completely partcaster? It'd be more valuable too, and selling the Squire as is might cover for the body plus there'd be one more guitar in the world?

I've done that too, though...I once had a Fenix I started swapping parts for and ended up with just the body and everything else changed. But had I known that from the start I'd have just sold the Fenix and bought be another body...

[birv2]

I have an Affinity strat and love it (even the skinnier neck). It's all a matter of taste of course.

I've changed pickups and blocked the trem, but that's it. However, I would like to change the tuners since these don't seem to hold tune very well. Any suggestions? Why did you pick the Gotoh's?

Good luck on your project!

Bob

[deeaa]

I just posted bout a squier a while back...indeed I liked it much save for thin, soft frets and rather bad tuners. those fixed, it'd be a nice axe. I use gotohs on all my guitars...they're just fine & inexpensive.

[thekiwidisciple]

Maybe that'd be a better idea. I've seen a few '57RI bodies around the traps for fairly cheap...