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Building a guitar. Pt 2..

Building a guitar.

Rating: 6 votes, 2.17 average.
Not from scratch but by sourcing the parts and putting them together.

However, that is only part of the story. The intent is buy cheap parts (where possible) and age them so they look like a 1962 Fender Stratocaster. The process is known as 'relicing.' Relicing isn't just making something look old, it's has to look used. There's a lot of opinions on whether most reliced guitars are over done and look unrealistic. In that sense I have an advantage being the owner of a late 80's strat that I gigged over a hundred times, so I know what a well used guitar looks like.

The end product should look something like this (I'll add images later).. That one (a 62) belongs to 'John Frusciante' and would go for around £20.000.

So far I've managed to snag a neck for £50 which came with Kluson tuners already fitted, which is going to save me a few quid. The neck I've bought is already aged, but I'm going to have to make a decision on whether to strip it to relic it or just leave it as is. The front of the head stock I'm fairly sure will have to be stripped so I can add the Fender decals (which I got from a company in Spain for a fraction of the cost of the same set from the U.S. (postage and import costs from the U.S. are extortionate but some parts will have to come from there as they can't be bought anywhere else.

the one other purchase I've made is a neck plate. However the one I got isn't period accurate and will only serve as a temporary one until I see one for sale that doesn't cost over £15 (it's just a metal plate with four holes. I'd really prefer one that's already stamped and got outbid on one I saw on ebay, I could have gone higher, but I want to try and keep the whole build under £200.

I'm onto a 'loaded scratch-plate' which is already aged. Loaded means it has pick-up's and electrics included, it's from an old Squire (budget strat) so it looks good and I should get it pretty cheap. I'll likely swap out the five way switch and maybe the pots for better ones but they can be replaced fairly cheaply and as they can't be seen they're not a priority.

I'm also following a sunburst Squire body which is already a bit beat up but will need a lot of work to get it the way I want it.

The one thing I can't source cheaply is a relic bridge which is going to cost around £50. I could but a new one and a bottle of hydrochloric acid and do it myself (the fumes tarnish/rust the nickel plating), that would save around £20 but as this is my first go at this I don't want to be messing stuff up. I want the guitar to look the part but I want it to play and sound good too.

Once it's done I'll likely sell it for around £250, not much of a profit but that's really not the point.

I'll add pics and update as I go along..

PART TWO:

Seems I can't edit the OP so..

What I'm aiming for [sort of]...

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...usciante-1.jpg

Progress was always going to be slow and at times held up by difficulties in getting parts. One thing that really tightens my, patience, is people who wait until the last seconds to try and gazump an Ebay purchase, but trying to keep my costs down means Ebay is a necessary evil.

The hardest thing to get was a body. I really wanted a sunburst finish (specifically a tobacco sunburst which is two tone and fades from black to yellow. Sadly these rarely come up (outside the US and remember those import charges!)... So I had a couple of bids in for what's called the cherry sunburst (three tones from black to red to yellow). Both of those bids were mercilessly stolen at the last second, one for more than I was prepared to go but the other for way less. I spent a couple of days seething to myself and decided the best way to get what I wanted was to buy a whole guitar..

I picked out a Squire 'affinity' stratocaster simply because it's the cheaper version of the guitar I'm building (as Squier are built by Fender many of the parts are interchangeable, if not as good quality).

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_163316.jpg...

So I got that for £70 - A great price for a 97' Japanese Squire. It's amazing how many people just don't know what they have in terms of guitars. Last week I contacted a guy who was selling a Japanese 57' reissue for £175 - that's a £500 guitar at the very least. I didn't have the money and buying it would have made this project pointless...

Any way... Ironically the owner had kept my new purchase in very good condition, as I picked it up in person I explained what I was going to do to it, he looked a little disturbed but handed it over regardless.

Any way. Of the purchases I made without any drama, the scratch-plate (loaded with electrics) turned up and I was very pleased with it. It has a nice aged look which isn't fake as It's from an 86' Japanese Squire which should give a pretty good sound, some parts (the five way switch especially) will have to be swapped out but even the original 'Oak Grigson' switch used on US strats are pretty cheap. The wiring is a bit hoaky and I'm going to have to take a better look at that.

The decal (headstock logo) also turned up, seems simple enough to apply but they're very very delicate and at £9 a pop I don't want to balls it up..

PART TWEE.

Poly put the kettle on.

Most, if not all, modern electric guitars are covered (finished) with polyurethane, a tough plasti-glass that doesn't age anywhere near as much as the old nitrocellulose finish. All well and good for guitar makers and distributors or the kind of player who likes their axe to look pristine as the day they bought it and have conniptions if it gets dinged or scratched. For those who don't mind their favorite guitar looking a bit banged up polyurethane is the work of the devil. Even more so for someone who wants to strip a guitar body to work on the colour in some way. It took about three hours of hard sanding to take the top layer f poly off this guitar, yeh I could have got a sander or a drill (and wrapped sandpaper round the end) but I didn't want that sander look where the wear is obviously artificial.

But first I had to take the guitar apart.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_164531.jpg

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_164604.jpg

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_164953.jpg

The next job was to sand all the poly off, being impatient and needing to vent during all the sanding I started chipping away at the paint as I was going.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_180610.jpg

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...528_180621.jpg

You can see the finish is much duller and already looks older in the parts I haven't damaged. There's another much harder coating under the poly and on top of the paint, not sure what they use there but that stuff is, in my opinion, a much nicer looking material. The chips and dings are kind of fun to do. I've a lot of method from angle grinders, hitting with barbed wire and chains to dragging along behind a pick-up truck. Since I don't have the means for those methods I chose throwing various objects both sharp and blunt and chiseling with a mini crow-bar and a screw driver.

Once that was done the part I enjoyed most started. Aging the exposed wood areas and adding a dirty grubbiness to it. I'll go into that in the next update..

Updated June 12, 2015 at 09:39 AM by Halie Satanus

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Comments

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  1. Halie Satanus's Avatar
    [QUOTE=Killerbee;bt212]Isn't that kind of a good thing ? I mean you're aiming for a worn look so I'd say it's quite appropriate really :P[/QUOTE]

    Yeh, but part of me couldn't live with it being messy.

    [QUOTE=Killerbee;bt212]Anyway seems like it's coming along nicely, curious to see the end result! Couldn't help but noticing the neck though. Is it just the angle and/or the lack of strings on it that makes it seem so fat ?[/QUOTE]

    It's actually pretty standard though slightly less rounded than my American strat. 50's originals are pretty thin by comparison.

    @Aik - All to complicated for me.. Maybe when I have time I'll look into how these work.
  2. Halie Satanus's Avatar
    Quick note while I think of it.

    I didn't abandon this project but as with everything I put my mind to its become a mission in getting exactly what I wanted. As such the project has been on going and is currently at a crossroads..... I'll leave it there for now and update properly soon.....
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