jowilmei Posted December 31, 2023 Report Share Posted December 31, 2023 EBMM released a BFR Cutlass called the 58 Nitro. It is essentially a vintage inspired modern guitar that I absolutely was enamored with... until I actually had it. I justified it as a graduation present. So $3500 and a few days later, it arrived. It was beautiful, and, owing to the roasted neck and body, came in under 7 lbs. I picked it up and did some minor setup adjustments and started playing. It sounded like a Stratocaster. Which is great! With that I realized that I had just spent half a used car on what could have been had for $150 just with a different brand. Also, nitro necks are officially a no go for me. Other small things that sealed the deal were a non-recessed trem cavity cover and a warped pickguard. I hadn't noticed the trem cavity cover in pictures and I suppose using vintage correct plastics means that warping is a likely possibility. I returned it and began scheming to essentially copy my favorite aspects of it. So here are my list of specs. Roasted alder body 1 piece Roasted maple neck w/ plain maple skunk stripe. SS frets. 2 tone sunburst nitro finish (minus the neck) two post tremelo. I can do all these things while incorporating my own design choices to make it an s-style rather than a strat replica, but I am tempted to just copy the EBMM headstock because it is so compact. I want to downsize the body a bit as I feel that strats are abnormally long for no apparent reason. The EBMM Cutlass seems to be a bit smaller. Does anyone have experience with downsizing strat bodies slightly? What is the percentage of full size that starts making the guitar look mini, rather than full size? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted December 31, 2023 Report Share Posted December 31, 2023 1 hour ago, jowilmei said: What is the percentage of full size that starts making the guitar look mini, rather than full size? If you can slim down the headstock as well, you can go quite far. Another thing to consider is to look into your mirror, anything will look small on a 150 kg 2 m tall guy! Reducing some 10% might not look strange but that's just a guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asdrael Posted January 1 Report Share Posted January 1 Don't forget that reducing a body "size" means a weight reduction. If you are already using a light construction type (swimming pool routing + trem routing of a roasted body wood) you might end up with an uncomfortable neck dive, especially with a strat construction - the neck is bolted quite far out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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