80s superstrat project (Hohner body / Warmoth neck)

[Heavy Rock]

The story begins when a few months ago, I got a cheap body from Reverb, because I had a few cheap parts lying around and wanted to turn them into a complete guitar, although to be a beater cheap one. So I went on searching and found this Rockwood by Hohner black body for 58 euros including shipping and I assembled the guitar with whatever crap I had around. Well, to my huge surprise the guitar sounded so good that I couldn't stop playing it. Since then it's the guitar I play almost all the time and whatever pickup I put in it, it brings the best of it out, the notes jump as long as I touch the strings and it's crazy how much the whole body vibrates while playing it.

So a couple weeks ago I decided that this body really deserves to be a better guitar than what I had matched it with. I made a quick research on what this body is made of and looks like many people believe it's made of plywood or basswood. It's a 1996 Rockwood body which in fact is a Korean Cortek body. It's surprisingly well made. For a while now I wanted to make a red superstrat, so I decided to use this body instead of getting a new one. I'm currently in the process of sanding the original color off and it's not plywood. It's a 3-piece body (one center piece and two sides), I don't know what wood it is but it has the tonal character of maple, super tight, super clear etc. I have a maple Warmoth soloist body which is almost identical in shape but the Rockwood is not as heavy as that though. Maybe it's a lighter piece of hard maple or it's soft maple, I don't know.

So at the end of this month I'm ordering a new Warmoth neck for this project, which will be a paddle headstock one. I want to make a guitar along the lines of the Hamer Californian model which I love the looks of. That headstock is pure 80s but not too bold, really perfect.

I'm attaching some pics of the body as it was originally and how I progressed with the sanding so far. I have made it down to the sanding sealer (I'll leave that on) and sculpted the heel a little. I'll be updating this thread as I go. Sorry for the lengthy post. Thanks for reading! See you around...

 

[Heavy Rock]

Some more progress with the sanding on the body. I'm gathering the parts at the moment.

This guitar is going to get all the mods I wanted to make over the years and didn't get to do. I'll make it my "signature" model so to speak. I want to make some slight mods to the body as well as the pickups and the bridge.

The bridge will be an original Floyd Rose I had since two years ago, that I modified with Graph Tech saddles and a stone block.

The bridge pickup will be a Gibson Dirty Fingers with an AlNiCo II center magnet instead of the ceramic one. The neck pickup will be a Fender Yosemite and the middle either a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound or a YJM Fury bridge. Haven't decided between the two yet. I'm going for a fat sounding pickup in the middle for more classic rock riffing and a Fender style sound from the neck pickup. The bridge must have that super tight clear distortion of the 80s.

I'm thinking to put all three pickups in plastic covers for that 80s look but not sure yet if I'll do that. Also I want to try the Graph Tech Un-Lock nut. If it works I'll keep it, otherwise I'll replace it with a standard Floyd Rose nut.

The Yosemites can be bought only as a set but I have plans for the other two in another project. Also I painted the neck plate black and sprayed a clear coat on too, I hope it will last long enough, we'll see.

I'm currently working on the body mods.

So here are a few pics with the parts I have s far.

 

[Strat Avenger]

The Yosemite pickups suck (very microphonic). I would suggest the Texas Special, or Dimarzio Area 61 or 67 for neck, and Injector for middle.

 

[Heavy Rock]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep that in mind. Actually if they don't work well my next choice is the Fat 50s. I'll keep the DiMarzios in mind too.

 

[Heavy Rock]

The neck is ordered (specs in picture).

And here's my weird mods on the body in question. What can I say, getting older makes me be more particular about little things on the guitar. It's been a while that I've noticed when playing my LTD MH-400, which has a carved top body, my picking hand likes it more because the center part of the body where the strings are, is elevated from the rest of the body. My hand has more room to move while I pick and somehow that helps me pick more accurately. But I don't like the look of carved top bodies, I prefer the minimal look of the flat top ones so here's my solution. I carved out a piece of it below the strings at the spot where I pick and tried it. Works great, and I like the look also.

The second mod is, I made the forearm contour flat. I always liked how the LTD 1987 Mirage looks like, so I took that idea and it actually feels more comfortable than the curved one from before.

The body needs some more detail sanding and then it's ready for the primer. I'll probably do it this week or the next weekend, lets see. I hope I'll be able to finish with the body before the neck arrives.

 

[Heavy Rock]

Ok, I had a minor setback. I had to enlarge the bridge post holes to put the Gotoh GE1996T posts in, because they're the only ones I have around from the good quality ones. One of the holes was for some reason a little too tight and a small crack formed in the wood while I was pressing the bushing in. That's not such a big deal, I've had other guitars like that and with some wood putty on the crack they're still holding perfectly fine. But I couldn't get over the fact that the hole was also a little crooked. I think that has to do with the Floyd Rose tuning stability so I glued a dowel in the hole and re-drilled. Now it's perfect.

I was looking for a way to drill the hole perfectly vertical and thought to try with a Dremel and its router base, but the tolerance of that one is not very good and while pressing it down it would move and change its angle. So I took out my big router which was a lot more stable. After I made a deep enough point by hand with the drill so the drill bit can be centered, I started drilling with the router using a step bit up to 10mm. Then I used a 7/16'' reamer bit to open it to size for the bushing. Everything went well and now it's vertical as it should.

Actually I should have followed the same process for the whole I needed to open for the tone pot, but at that moment I just rushed and used a big-ass 10mm drill bit right away and butchered it. Sometimes my brain doesn't work as it should to be honest.

Also I got this small wardrobe from IKEA to protect the guitar from dust and bugs while painting and it works very well. So started with the primer today and tomorrow I'm painting the color on.

Some pics of the process:

 

[Spud]

It's allrock n roll mistakes can be fixed or are character

 

[Heavy Rock]

It's allrock n roll mistakes can be fixed or are character

Haha yeah exactly!

 

[Heavy Rock]

The process goes a little slower but I'm keeping the waiting times as I should with the primer and paint coats. For the paint, I was looking for a specific red shade that is bright enough but without any orange hint inside it, and the best red I found was a car brake caliper paint . So I took that and painted the guitar with it lol. Very happy with that red however. I sanded the orange peel look down a little and now I'll wait a few days and spray the clear coat. I'll use SprayMax 2K gloss for that one.

Also I decided to use a standard Floyd locking nut for this one. The experiment with the Graph Tech Unlock nut will wait for another project. I feel a little lazy to mess with a different nut at the moment and also I already have a bunch of standard locking nuts already, and a couple of them are original.

And one more thing that came to mind. I really like the HSS setup but don't like the single coils mounted directly on the wood. I had them jumping out due to worn threads in their mounting holes multiple times in the past. So I got these single coil pickup base plates that I'm going to use to mount the pickups. I'll screw those in on the bottom of the pickup cavities and mount the pickups on them. Their edge holes come already threaded for standard single coil mounting screws, like the ones Fender uses to mount the pickups on their pickguards, and I have many of those (perfect!). I think these will work a lot better.

Link: Single coil base plates

Some pics:

 

[Heavy Rock]

Ok there's only 10 pic upload limit so I'll make two posts.

I level-sanded the body before I put the final few coats of clear on. There are still some low spots but I think it'll be fine with the couple more coats and final sanding and polishing. I reached a level with the body that can't go any further for now because I want to use the other can of 2K poly for the headstock as well so I'll spray them on the same day. The timing couldn't be better because the neck arrived! (next post).

 

[Heavy Rock]

So as Warmoth said (4-6 weeks) the neck was finished last Wednesday exactly on time, and within two days it came here! Super fast! I got to say, the Clapton profile feels so good, I should have tried it earlier. And the quartersawn is super good, almost vertical. The lightning bolt inlays look amazing, very cool stuff overall! Very happy with the result. I started working on it right away.

The last picture shows the headstock design I used. I needed one tiny piece on the bottom of the paddle to accommodate that, so I cut a small piece from the top side and glued it on the bottom side. I could have tilted the headstock slightly to fit it but since I had enough wood, I didn't want to mess with the geometry of the whole thing, sometimes a small difference can ruin things aesthetically. Anyway...

So here are some pictures of the progress. I also wanted to stain the neck a little, not much. I used a golden yellow paint and denatured alcohol, looks pretty good and the next day I put a very thin coat of sanding sealer on top. Today, I'll cut the headstock, probably I'll use a drill to drill many holes along the perimeter and a saw.

If anyone wants to use the headstock of the last picture, the nut width came out a little narrower on the A4 sheet for some reason (42mm instead of 42.8mm), but that worked out pretty well, since you can use the paper as a template to trace it with a marker on the wood, so it will add one mm to the whole perimeter. That's what I did and it worked pretty well.

Pics:

 

[Heavy Rock]

The neck is ready for clear. I'll spray 2K poly matte on the back and fretboard and 2K poly gloss on the front, back and sides of the headstock.

The truss rod cover is made by hand so it's not the most perfectly centered creation (I'm thinking I might order a regular Jackson truss rod cover so I put it on with the correct hole positions, but not sure yet).

I wanted to drill the tuning key holes like Warmoth does with smaller holes on the face of the headstock (8mm or so) and the standard 10mm ones from the back for the bushings of the pegs to lean against to. While I was trying to drill from the back the drill bit drove throughout the headstock and opened a 10mm hole from top to bottom. I could have left it like that but due to obsessive-compulsive disorder, I doweled and re-drilled. I managed to do it with a hacked dremel router bit with a small ball bearing and some tape................

The name on the headstock I took from The Horror At Red Hook novel by H.P. Lovecraft, and I think it matches the color of the guitar well, ha. These are decals that you put on cars, glass doors etc and the letters are slightly raised but I hope I can cover them with clear and sand flat if I put enough of it, we'll see. Ordered from Amazon. I gave the truss rod a model name too, PR-4 for Project-4, as it's my fourth build.

Anyway, the neck is ready for the clear now which probably happen this weekend.

 

[stratamania]

Tip, try using the insert image tool that looks like a photo then your images will be more easily viewed than when added as attachments.

 

[Strat Avenger]

Nice progress.

 

[Heavy Rock]

Tip, try using the insert image tool that looks like a photo then your images will be more easily viewed than when added as attachments.

View attachment 64221

Hey thanks, updated all the posts, hope it's better.

 

[Heavy Rock]

Nice progress.

Thanks man, cheers!

 

[stratamania]

Hey thanks, updated all the posts, hope it's better.

Excellent

 

[Heavy Rock]

Ok the body went pretty smoothly, although you can still see some scratches in a couple spots. And maybe some very small low spots that I left. I think I started with a little too fine grit (1200) and I used the same piece while it became finer and finer. Maybe I should start with 800. Then polished with 3 compounds (heavy cut, medium cut and fine polish). I was a little concerned not to burn through the clear coat because it happened to me in the past, that's why I didn't wetsand enough probably. It's far from perfect but for me it's alright. Maybe in the future I'll do something about it, we'll see.

My polishing tools need upgrading for sure. I just used a hand drill and these wheels but the coverage is very small and the whole thing is tough to control.

The last picture shows the single coil base plates installed in the body waiting for the pickups.

Next step is to finish with the neck, then wait a couple weeks to a month for the clear coat to fully cure and then, assemble it at last!

So here's the body:

 

[ragamuffin]

Vroom vroom! Looks fast!

 

[Strangs]

So much hell yeah with this whole build! I really like the picking area body mod and nice job on the finish. Thanks for the reminder to get some buffing tools.