My Fourth Strat Almost Done

[catnine]

I built this after the single pickup SRV yellow strat , I made the body some years ago maybe 14 and it has sat . I made it for a left hand treolo and sunburst but the finish did not come out to my lijing so I made another . This time I scraped the finish off , converted it back to a right hand trem and built the neck . All I have left is to fit the nut slots to their final set depth and final sand and apply the yellow finish ( if I can come close to the light yellow ) and add my intials to the area where the two pups are not and play the blues .

[!!METAL MATT!!]

Look's good it's gota be one of the longest builds I've heard of 14 years WOW

hope to see more Pic's soon

and hey welcome to the forum

!!METAL MATT!!

Edited December 26, 2004 by !!METAL MATT!!

[catnine]

The body is 14 years old kept sitting in a bag waiting for the day I would put it to use , but the rest I just made this last month . Things have certainly changed around town . There were two very well stocked hardwood sources near me and now both are gone . I had to go online and get wood for the neck from stew mac . I made two fret boards also 14 years ago and this was still a prime piece of brazilian rosewood with a nice dark purple hue . So the body and fingerboard are well aged . There were even alot of guitat shops that I could get parts from and many now sell nothing but pickguards and strings straps and other accessories . I had warmoth make the pickguard and bought the rest of the hardware from stew mac except the tremolo that was warmoth as well . I set the slots in the nut today and strung it up and it sounds great . Just a little lower in the nut slots , I set them at .035 over the frets across the nut so maybe another .010 off will do just fine . I like it a bit stiff so you can really dig in and no buzz . I am not looking forward to doing the finish , it does not have to be perfection with a mirror glass gloss , this will not last long anyway . Every guitar I have made has the sign of use on them . I was thinking maybe water base no stink fast dry brush on finish that can be buffed out nicely . Once I used a clear that was not true clear and it turned the white a yellow green tint . I thought I saw something usefull on stew macs site about clear water based finish . All I need is that and some yellow and white to lighten the yellow and I'm happy .

I made the neck almost 1 inch deep at the nut and it is 1 3/4" wide at the nut with a 7.5 mm string spacing and the neck tapers to just over an inch deep at the body . So it would be like what warmoth calls a fatneck of boatneck shape . The single pickup seems to let it ring long and clear without the additional magnetic pull from the other two , a benefit I did not count on .