Finally built a guitar...

[duhvoodooman***]

...not that I can take much credit for the effort involved. It's your basic partscaster or Frankenstrat, or whatever you want to call it. I was amazed at how fast & easy the assembly process was--once I had the parts assembled, I knocked it off in an evening. If you can drive a screw and make a decent solder connection, you can handle one of these. The genius of Leo Fender deserves all the credit.

The project started when one of the regulars over at the BYOC forums put a loaded Strat pickguard up for sale. Nothing special about that, per se, but the pickup set caught my eye. It's a mixed set of Duncan single coil-sized humbuckers that they call the "Everything Axe" set. It consists of a Little '59 for the neck position, a "Duckbucker" for the middle, and a JB Jr. for the bridge. I didn't have anything like it and he posted it at a bargain price, so I jumped on it. Now, what to do with it??

While mulling this question, I happened upon a body from a Squier CV '60s Strat posted on my local CL. Everything had been stripped out of it--nothing but wood & finish, but obviously never used/dead mint. Perfect! The guy was asking $80, I offered $65 and we settled at $70. What he did with the rest of the guitar, I have no idea. Since the guy is located 30 miles away from me, a coworker of mine who lives right near him picked it up for me last weekend, so I never got a chance to chat with him about it.

The rest of the guitar consists of a Squier CV '50s neck and a full CV hardware set, both of which I got from The Stratosphere, with whom I've dealt on several occasions in the past for Strat and Tele parts. I think the owner must buy Fender & Squier guitars new and just parts them out. Anyway, the neck & hardware were all brand new, as well. So between the loaded p/g, the CL body and the Stratosphere parts, I've now got what's essentially a brand new Squier Classic Vibe '50s/'60s Strat hybrid with a killer set of Duncan aftermarket pickups. Total of everything came to $400, not including shipping. I've also got a set of white Strat knobs coming, and some Schaller strap lock buttons, to finish it off. I call it the "Humcaster".

The p/g assembly originally came with just a volume control, but I added a master tone control using a push/pull pot, and wired that to switch the middle "Duckbucker" pickup to run the coils in series or parallel mode. Duncan actually recommends that this pickup model be wired to run the coils in parallel "for vintage Strat tones", but I wanted the flexibility to run in series as well. Certainly has a lot more b@lls in that mode, and the output matches the Little '59 (neck) and JB Jr. (bridge) a lot better.

After I assembled the guitar, one "operational issue" had to be addressed, though. As is often encountered when matching up different necks & bodies, the neck angle was a bit too low and the guitar fretted out something awful on the upper frets, even with plenty of relief in the neck and the saddles up as high as they would go. So the neck had to be shimmed to raise the angle a bit. Two business cards inserted between the neck and body at the top of the neck pocket did the trick. I was even able to take out some of the neck relief and lower the saddles back down to a normal height. The Humcaster is playing perfectly now! The humbuckers sound great--they retain more Strat character than I thought they would--and the guitar looks pretty good, too, IMO.

Coupla pics: