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50% Warmoth / Fender Elite Stratocaster Build with custom contour heel

johnnyj

Junior Member
Messages
67
hi guys,

just finished my latest guitar and i am very happy about the result. i got the idea when i saw a beautiful american elite stratocaster neck in a local store. this neck is one of the very rare fender necks that have a compound 9.5-14 radius and was fitted for the typical fender elite contour heel construction. so i ordered a warmoth in stock body to make it work. the body was an ultra light chambered alder body unfinished with a swimming pool route (which also adds to the lightweight). luckily the body modifications that made the body compatible turned out very nicely.

for the bridge i decided to go with a gotoh 510 routing and customized a 510NS tremolo with old fender saddles for more authenticity. together with the staggered fender locking tuners the tuning stability is as expected fantastic and fluttering behavior is really nice. for the pickups i used in neck and middle the eric johnson set, paired with a seymour duncan yngwie malmsteen signature stack pickup. for wiring i used the schematic that @stratamania helped me with for another guitar (thx again for this) and added an autosplit for the middle position. so i got now a 4 way wiring (neck, neck/middle, middle/split bridge, bridge full) which leaves only the neck as a humming position while the other three are noisefree. the volume poti is a shadow sh124 killpoti with 250k which fits the pickups well. i will play now a bit to see if i finally leave the bridge in it or change it, since the character is very different from the single coils when in full bridge mode.

for the finish i decided this time for a crimson guitar water based coloring followed up by a high build oil finish. in the whole process i was happy to not do any fuckups, except the fact that i managed to spoil the black color all over my floor and room which remains now in my living room and some of my interior forever to remind me of my clumsiness. :rolleyes:

will post some sound examples soon, it turned out very nice. the playability is extremly easy and the sound very snappy.

here you see more documentary of it. the colors in my video turned out way more purple because of some stupid filter, while in reality it is more a deep wine red.

best
j.
 

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This looks great, thanks for sharing it here. Congratulations and enjoy playing it!
 
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