Lefty ash strat

[BigBeard]

Ok I have completed another project, this one for a gentleman in England, which is very cool that my work is international!!!!

Anyway for you spec junkies, here they are:

Lightweight ash Mighty-Mite body and Mighty-Mite neck, Coke can red and black grain filler under satin laquer, Floyd Rose, Seymour Duncan PAF rhythm PU, Duncan Distortion F spaced lead, three way LP toggle, series/coil off/parallel mini switches for PU's, push pull volume control that controls phase of rhythm pickup.  Jack plate, neck plate and pickguard are all flush mounted, I routed the body to make everything sit flush.  Why?  Because of the ultra smooth final fit and finish of the guitar, you can run your hand over the guitar and there aren't bumps and stuff just bolted to the surface.  I think the effort is definately worth it for the detail it provides. 

I bought the body without a floyd rout, and did it myself.  Not as difficult as I assumed it was going to be, although I'm not a Floyd Fan at all, I can see the mystique!


So why am I posting pictures of this guitar on the Warmoth forum when the body and neck are not Warmoth?  Well the pickguard is a custom Warmoth piece that I thought should be brought to the good members attention.  The pickguard has no edge bevel, it is square to facilitate 'inlaying' it into the guitar, for a very smooth transition.  The pickguard man at Warmoth did me right on this one!  Any time I do a guitar like this strat, or any guitar with a pickguard for that matter I will contract Warmoth to do the plastic work for me, it was well worth the $50 for the pickguard!

 

[pabloman]

Good work. How's that MM body?  I've been thinking about getting one but I'm not sure. :dontknow:

 

[Cagey]

That's an attractive piece of work, and if I'm understanding you correctly, you inlaid that pickguard? Should take some pictures that show that feature off better, as I imagine others would be interested in having something like that done.

First time I saw that sort of thing, Ron Kirn had inlaid the jackplate and the neckplate, and ever since I saw that I've wondered why more people don't do it. It's a gorgeous bit of detail work. Although, according to Ron, it has to be done on a one-off basis because every piece is different enough that to make general template is a waste of time. Could be he's too picky, but that's his story and he's sticking to it.

 

[pabloman]

That's a great link Cagey. Thanks.

 

[Cagey]

No problem. He did a good job with that, didn't he?

 

[BigBeard]

That's an attractive piece of work, and if I'm understanding you correctly, you inlaid that pickguard? Should take some pictures that show that feature off better, as I imagine others would be interested in having something like that done.

Thank you Cagey.  Yes I did inlay the pickguard.  Quite labor intensive and a lot of time with a router and a dremel set up as a router.  I don't know honestly if you can make a template to do this, I do it freehand....... I have some specific tricks to how I do it, but that's a secret I choose not to share.  It does require a square edge on the pickguard for the cleanest installation.  There is also countless time spent in fitting the pickguard to the hole.  Not like a permenant inlay that gets glued, there is a little bit you can fudge with an inlay that will get filled with glue etc, but with a removable inlayed piece, there is a fine line that the piece fits, and doesn't.  And if you get the tiniest bit sloppy, you can see it.  Can't hide anything with epoxy when doing this detail.  This example I might add is the best one I have ever done.  It took a tiny bit of trimming of my original rout to get everything good, but I took my time and made sure to be extremely conservative with the router.  I figured I could go back 100 times to trim, but once I went over the line once, that was it for the body, I'd have to start over.  Fortuantely the router gods were with me that afternoon and she turned out beautiful! 

Good work. How's that MM body?  I've been thinking about getting one but I'm not sure. :dontknow:

Honestly?  Good as anything Warmoth offers!!!!!  And the price is a little more attractive if you know what I mean.  Routs are right on, had a really nice tight neck rout.  Grain was superb, super light weight.  I definately recommend them to anybody, for the price they really can't be beat.  The neck is great also.  I had to buy a reverse right handed neck because I couldn't find a left handed neck with a locking nut shelf.  No biggie, I explained that to my client and he said he was ok with side dots on both sides of the neck.  I had to do the side dots for the lefty side of the neck myself, not too tough of a job.  Really the fit and finish of the raw body and neck are as good or not better than anything that comes out of the California Fender factory

Thanks for all the positive vibes guys!!!

 

[exaN]

Digging that color man! That's a cool Strat for sure.