Flame Top w/ Canary Neck

[Phrygian]

Finally, here it is.  The only thing missing now is the tremolo cover.

• Flame Maple on Alder with a Tobacco Burst finish
• Canarywood Vintage Modern neck, Standard Thin profile, Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard, and 6105 nickel frets
• Gold hardware from Warmoth
• White pearl Fender H-S-H pickguard
• American Standard Tremolo
• Gotoh Kluson tunners
• Lace Hot Gold pickups (neck and bridge humbuckers are Duallies)
• 5-way switch, 250k pots, .022uf orange drop cap
• Middle pickup tone pot is a push-pull type wired to split the humbuckers to the outside coils (down position is single coil and up position is humbucking)

Here is a quick and dirty sample of me jamming some blues on the neck pickup (single coil) the other night:
http://www.mediafire.com/?92hef2mltdm

 

[jackthehack]

Sweet!  ccasion14:

 

[guitlouie]

Very nice!  That hum-sin-hum config should be killer!  Enjoy man!

 

[simple]

Nice!

 

[Shmoopie]

i see your nice, and i raise you, an awesome.

 

[Alfang]

I think your bluffing,,,,I'll call your awesome

 

[Nando Vallart]

Classy look! Awesome!

 

[Shmoopie]

read em' and weep, and don't be a sore looser and make me have to play 52 pickup.

 

[m4rk0]

I love it!

How does the neck feel ?

 

[thepriebster]

Finally! I've been waiting for your finished pics. I personally think it looks great without the trem cover.
BTW, Smokin sounding clip...great blues licks too.

 

[shaneman]

Man, That's gotta be one of my favorite paint jobs for a strat and w/ the white accents too!  Really Nice Strat.

Shane-O :icon_thumright:

 

[JR]

thats beautiful! and those flowers!! you sure kno how to market a product!! 

 

[Phrygian]

Thanks for the compliments guys!  I extremely pleased with the way it turned out.  It will certainly become my number one guitar.  The raw Canarywood neck feels unbelievable, and the neck profile feels way better than my '62 reissue.  The compound radius is great too.  I was worried that it might feel too flat since I'm used to the vintage style necks.  Also, I really like the Hot Gold pickups, especially as single coils.  They are nice and bright with plenty of bottom end and output.

I plan to post some more sound clips soon, and I'm going to do some comparisons with my reissue Strat.  I need to find a better site to host MP3s where I can directly link to the file.  Any thoughts on this?

 

[m4rk0]

Damn! you are making me change my mind again!
after a Rosewood, Bloodwood and Wenge neck, I wanted to use a 'lighter' colored wood for my upcoming thinline (before I do a Korina/Ziricote Strat)

I was sure that it was going to be Goncalo, but this looks great too... if it only sounds and feels as good!

 

[Phrygian]

Damn! you are making me change my mind again!
after a Rosewood, Bloodwood and Wenge neck, I wanted to use a 'lighter' colored wood for my upcoming thinline (before I do a Korina/Ziricote Strat)

I was sure that it was going to be Goncalo, but this looks great too... if it only sounds and feels as good!

It's my first raw neck, so I have nothing to compare with.  I would love to feel Goncalo.  Maybe that's what I'll do for a future build, if it's still available.  As far as color goes, the yellow and red really shows in bright natural light.  In indoor incandescent light, it takes on a slightly greenish brown hue.  IMO, it's a really good looking wood.

 

[TroubledTreble]

Great vision and excecution! I really like the way this one came together. It sounds great!

Fantastic!!

-TT-

 

[-CB-]

HooooLahLah.... thats a nice burst, nice top too!~

 

[jackthehack]

Nice - How do you like those Dually's? Been thinking about using that same PU config in a VIP but wiring it up like a PRS 513 for a build on down the road; LOVE the tapped Lace Arenas on my Spalted Maple Strat build, but haven't tried the Dually's yet...

 

[Phrygian]

Nice - How do you like those Dually's? Been thinking about using that same PU config in a VIP but wiring it up like a PRS 513 for a build on down the road; LOVE the tapped Lace Arenas on my Spalted Maple Strat build, but haven't tried the Dually's yet...

I'm not sure what to think yet.  I'm still experimenting.  First of all, I'm not all that experienced with humbuckers.  I've owned a couple of guitars with bridge humbuckers.  If I were using them alone, I think I'd go with 500k pots.  Quite a bit of amp tone tweaking is required when switching from split to humbucking and vice versa.  They are fairly hot wired in series.  Switching from split to humbucking is a mega lower-mid boost.  As a humbucker, the bridge is useless clean.  It has way too much low midrange honk.  It sounds good through the crunch, stack, and solo models on my J-Station.  The neck pickup (humbucking) sounds pretty good clean through my Princeton Reverb, and I can get it to sound OK through the clean models on my J-Station with some tweaking.

 

[thepriebster]

Phrygan-A man!
Came across  the pics of your axe again and it still wows me.
Hows it playin now that you have had some time to play it?
(I'm still about 2 to 3 weeks out I think)