crafty

Alder or ash with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro single coils or Classic Stacks will give you a warm sound with a little Strat bite in there. Read some of the tutorials on the main page and check out the pickup manufacturer's websites. You'll get a lot more info that way.

You're going to lose a bit of fulcrum power when you mill down the block a 1/2 inch, so you'll probably wind up using one or two springs instead of three or four. Let us know how it turns out.

I think your Mom and her Professor need to go back and retake "Trademarks and Unfair Competition". Research or not, you HAVE to have a legal license to use any software. Autocad has not been licensed for any kind of free-distribution, so downloading, installing, and USING an unlicensed copy is very much illegal. BTW, before you say anything else: 1. I'm graduating from law school this coming May. 2. I took Trademarks and Unfair Competition last fall. 3. I used to design and program software for a living--so I take licensing very seriously.

There is no echo. You used your insidious mental telepathy skills to read my thoughts and post MY comment before I did. I couldn't let you get away with that! Seriously, though, I've only had one humbucker buzz on me and that was because of a poor braid connection to ground. I resoldered that and only had problems when I was next to a computer monitor, which I've found that not even EMGs can block that kind of interference.

What on EARTH are you talking about?! Hum-buck-ers "buck" the "hum". Single coil pickups do not. That post makes absolutely zero sense. Either that or we just have completely different perceptions of what buzz sounds like.

Tap the nut out from the side with a small awl and a hammer. Turn the nut 180 degrees and tap back into place. There is no need to purchase a new nut or re-slot the old one on your application. Just turn the nut around so that the low-E is where the high-E used to be. BTW, I own a MIM Strat and I have taken the nut off several times. It will not come off in pieces unless you use too much pressure or it's already cracked. It will work with your new application for the neck.

Yeah, check the ground continuity on everything, but also double-check the resistance of those pots through their full sweep. If you had a hard time getting the solder to bond then you may have held the heat on too long and burned up the pot. For future reference: 1. Clean corrosion off surfaces to be soldered with a pencil eraser, even if you can't see corrosion. 2. Clean eraser residue off surfaces to be soldered with rubbing alcohol. 3. Set your soldering iron for medium heat. 4. Tin the soldering tip and wipe clean with damp sponge. 5. Tin the surfaces to be soldered. 6. Solder the components together with quality rosin-core solder. The stuff at Radio Shack is crap, but short of buying the good stuff from Jameco or Jensen, look for it at Sears. It's the best stuff I've been able to find locally and it melts and flows just as good as Kester. I also like using paste flux to aid soldering of large areas, but it can mess with the innards of components like potentiometers.

Wrong. The unwound strings will be too low in their slots if you just "re-slot" it. Just take it out, turn it around, and it should work fine.

Who's bad-mouthing Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio? Ed Roman?! The SD Jazz neck and JB bridge is a good combo for just about any style. Alnico II Pros sound good too--just check out Slash. Dimarzio's FRED and PAF Pro/Joe combo is also an excellent choice for versatility. It does come down to your budget, too. Bartolinis and EMGs are going to be more expensive, especially if you start adding on presence and boost controls, but they're going to sound awesome and clean. SD and Dimarzio both make fantastic pickups and popularized the whole concept of tailoring pickup choice to your own style. I use to run an SD Alnico II Pro HB Bridge, Classic Stack mid, and JB Jr. neck in my Strat. I run through a lot more digital effects now, so I switched over to an EMG SA set a few weeks ago and the new sound suits me just fine. I spent $197 on the new setup, but for my current playing style it suits me just fine. Some people like the sound they get out of a $20 MightyMite Motherbucker, some like the sound of an $800 USED set of Joe Bardens. Play around with 'em for a while until you find YOUR sound. But I do recommend the JB/Jazz setup as a good starting point for your interests.

Awesome. I like the feel of those Ibanez AX necks and the combo of that body is just killa. Top notch.

Keep in mind, with going with USACG you'll probably get the neck faster and it will be good enough for an investment grade instrument. The $125 fee to take the machine offline and reprogram it to the specs of your current neck is alone worth the money if you're looking to sell the instrument for $1000. What did the other shop quote you for a total?

So...use some big dowels, then? There's nothing "Fender standard" that's going to fit your neck pocket if you leave it as-is. You're either going to have to commission or build a neck yourself if you want one that'll fit the neck pocket for the strange neck you used. You could probably look up some Ibanez or ESP neck pocket dimensions and see if there's a neck that you can modify or adjust your neck pocket a little to make one fit. I really think the simplest way to go is fill the holes you made with thick dowels, redo the neck pocket a little, and buy a USACG or Warmoth neck. Sorry, bud.

Fill the old mounting holes in the neck pocket with dowels. Put the new USACG or Warmoth neck in the pocket and see how much space there is between the end of the neck and the back of the pocket. Fab a piece of wood to take up that space--it shouldn't be THAT much if it's a 25-1/2 scale guitar. Drill new mounting holes in the pocket for the new neck. String, tune, intonate, enjoy. You did use a 25-1/2 inch scale, right?

The USACG and Warmoth necks are designed to fit in the Fender Strat/Tele neck pockets, depending on which one you specify. They feature an overhang for the 22nd fret because the pockets were originally designed by Fender for 21-fret necks. So, the real question is, how did you figure out the scale length of your guitar and how did you measure the bridge placement? If the guitar is scaled for the neck you have now, the new shorter neck may affect the scale length unless you have sufficient space between the end of the neck and the body in the neck pocket.

You can go up to 22 frets without moving the neck pickup. Also, for some reason I was thinking about the front route on a traditional V. Those are usually much larger and more complicated than the Jackson-style RRVs. Learn to solder. It's about the easiest part of guitar repair and construction. You won't have to depend on someone else to it for you, too. Drilling the holes for wiring is even easier, just use long bits and some cardboard to protect the top if the spinning chuck is going to rub up against it.

Looks like a Wagner Power Painter to me. Most people use them with thick latex house paint on houses.

Yeah, use a screwdriver and take out one screw at a time!! But seriously, $80 is a steal for a guitar like that. The stock pickups are okay, but aftermarkets really sound great in that guitar. I just put a set of EMG-SAs in my '95 mexican strat and it just sounds amazing. It's a good foundation to start a good project with or even just have a testbed for new ideas. The stock tuners are hit and miss. Mine were pretty stable, but I do use the trem occasionally so I replaced them with locking Schallers. That was my first major project because I had to drill out the holes in the headstock a little bigger to fit the bigger tuners. Enjoy the guitar.

Let the glue dry for at least 24 hours, not 10 minutes. The pressure put on those screws by strings and springs will be enough to pull those dowels out right after 10 minutes. They'd probably pull out when you'd go to drill them, too. 24 hours.

yes and yes...doesn't it say Made in Mexico under the "Stratocaster" name on the decal? If you want the exact date, take the pickguard off and look at the inspection sticker. It will have the exact date and the initials of the final QA inspector. That is, if it's the original pickguard.

...or we just have a lot of new members likely because of the Guitar Player feature and they're trying to get advice on things we discussed a year ago, maybe? BTW, I WAS looking around here a year ago, I just didn't join until March when I found out a friend of mine posted stuff here too.

The stud is supposed to fit tight and actually grab hold of the wood as it goes in so it doesn't tear back out. 1. Don't whack the studs. Like Chubbs says, "Just tap it in". You don't want to split the wood or crack the body. 2. Try a little scraping a little dry bar soap or wax on the flutes of the studs. Might make 'em go in a little easier. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Hammer?

Nope. Even Brian sells the kits he's hand picked and worked out the bugs on for less than $130, with the headstocks precut. You can't beat Indonesian and Chinese slave wages. That's why they can give us $150 Squier Affinity Teles with butterscotch blonde finishes, good fretwork, and decent pickups. I'd say with a custom finish and headstock, you could probably get away with selling them for $150 assembled, $125 unassembled.

Good Lord. I thought all the guitar companies were cracking down on crap like this. Just last week someone posted that his imitation Bigsby (without the Bigsby logo) auction was taken down because Gretch complained to eBay. If you want to pretend you have a Gibson, fine, that's your bing. Just don't be a jerk and try to pawn it off to some unsuspecting newbie. Gibson makes plenty of left-handed guitars and the reason why stuff like this is illegal is so people don't get duped into buying fake guitars. Not cool, man.

Just don't be afraid to take the time to do it right. Quality is key if you're trying to copy a PRS, and the devil is in the details.