Upcoming NGD and Beginning of Project thread - Blacktop HH Strat

[sunvalleylaw]

I posted recently in the Squier subthread regarding wanting to mod up a guitar into a HH superstrat similar (but not identical) to the one Rivers Cuomo has used over the years. The goal is to have a solidbody HH guitar in a strat form. For whatever reason, I just prefer that form to a Les Paul, and my Hagstrom is close enough with the control layout on that guitar for me. It was coming down to between a Telecaster and Strat. Strat form won out.

As I said, I was looking at Squiers, but was running into issues finding a guitar that had the neck I wanted, (CV level, and preferred rosewood for this one) and was routed for HH. I did not want to go all woodshop on the project. And as I was looking, I found that the Blacktop HH guitars have RW necks AND 22 frets which I started to want for some reason. I will have to learn to incorporate those threads into my playing some day. So, was considering swapping out necks. But necks are expensive. Even used Blacktop ones. So along the way I found a craigslist ad for a Blacktop in the color I preferred for a decent price. Made an offer I expected to dicker from and low and behold, struck a deal! Yay! So, though the initial outlay is more than the squier I was looking at, overall, it will not be all that much more, and will end up with probably a better result. So, presuming the guitar arrives as planned and the deal does not fall through, here is the guitar that is coming my way! These pics are from the seller.









When the guitar gets to me I will post some better pics.

Plans: Pull the current pick ups and pickguard (after playing around with it stock first for a bit), then put in Tone2theBone's Dimarzio Virtual Hot PAF I got from him like nearly 10 years ago to put into a Fullerton strat I had for like 5 minutes. And put in something like a Dimarzio Humbucker from Hell, which is a pretty tonefull humbucker that can have single coil like qualities and sing a bit. Not all crunch. Again, some of this is Rivers Cuomo inspired. Also thinking I may replace the volume pot with one that has a little better taper. Something like a Proline pot. The Virtual Hot PAF is not F spaced, but based on what i have read, it should still work. The bridge is the narrower 2 1/16 so it is right on the line. But lots of folks seem to use regular humbuckers in their strats with no problems, so I will try it. Have been wanting to use this pick up a long time, and it is a very popular one.

Should be fun! I will update as I go! This one may take me a while. for one thing, I will have to dust off my soldering skills!