Odds and Ends: Guitars - Stratocaster

A great hobby of mine is guitars, both building and playing them. I don't claim to be the best at either task, but it's something I enjoy greatly nonetheless.




Stratocaster
Some time ago, I began work on a guitar styled after Edward Van Halen's own design for guitars. I began with two guitars, a Peavey Vortex and a 3rd party Stratocaster model. 

Edward Van Halen with his homemade 'Frankenstrat' circa 2007.

Essentially, the whole project was to transplant the Vortex's guts into the Stratocaster. The process began with dismantling each guitar, and removing all the 'guts'- wiring, bridges, pickups, necks, jacks, etc. Because the Stratocaster's body wasn't built for the Floyd Rose style bridge the Vortex has, the housing around the bridge had to be delicately chipped out to accommodate the larger bridge.

 Once both guitars were gutted, the Stratocaster body (left picture, right guitar) had the glossy coat removed via sanding. Once the coat had been taken off completely, the excess dust was wiped off and the body primed with white primer.























After the white primer coat was dry, tape was spread across the body to mask the white sections from the  red coat of spray paint that was to follow. Once the red coat was finished, the same technique was used again to add the final layer of black paint.

After the aesthetics of the guitar were finished, I moved on to replacing the guts of the instrument. This involved cutting the pick guard out to accommodate larger pickups (see above left image) and rewiring the guitar as a whole. Being a novice with soldering in general, this proved challenging, but not impossible. After several attempts at soldering, I finally managed to get the wiring right. 

The above right image shows the initial final product of the project. Overall, I was relatively happy with it. Although, after all the hard work I put into the project, it still didn't sound and feel quite right.


After six months or so of the project gathering dust, I returned to it and had another go. I re-dismantled the guitar again and tweaked the design. I added more black stripes to it than I originally did, added damage to the guitar such as heavily scuffed edges and cigarette burns as well as replacing the original bridge. Even after the second attempt at the building, it still wasn't quite right. 

Once more, I revisited the project recently and de constructed the guitar again, this time intent on getting the wiring right once and for all. With this in mind, and realising that what I had just wasn't working enough, I completely started again with the wiring. So as to simplify things, I simply wired  one pickup to once control nob and the amp jack. And it works! Well, almost anyway. There are still some wiring issues (as I said, I'm not the best in the world!) but (I think) it's a case of the grounding of the electricity.


Even now, after all the time I've spent on making this guitar, I will admit, It still doesn't work; with the wiring issues, tuning, problems and a problem with the bridge, there is still ways to go before I get the right. I'll get there in the end. Because I've been working on this on and off for so long, I don't think I even could just throw it all out and be done with it. I've enjoyed the whole process thus far, and it has enlightened me that, yes, I am capable of doing things such a this, but I've still got a ways to go to get things perfect, and that no matter how hard something is to do, keep at it.

And you have my word that one day, I will get this blasted thing right!