Mid-late 80s [mostly-]Harmony Strat-clone (from Montgomery Ward/Sears), acquired in 1992.
Built this from about 3 different guitars from parts in my drummer's basement. Acquired in trade for 2 large Pepperoni Lovers pizzas (I worked at the Hut). He didn't want to give me the trem for it so we eyeballed a fixed bridge over the rout (got it pretty accurate!) with some random wood screws. Cut up a Bic pen to use as inserts for the tuner posts, which were narrower than the tuner holes. I was so stoked back then that it had an actual Fender Strat neck plate.
Originally a vintage white body with clear gloss maple neck, I immediately stripped it down and painted it and the pegface black with an edge-peel graphic on the forearm contour (all wth Krylon) and slapped some skate stickers on it. Over the next couple years it accumulated some additional stickerage and the mermaid tattoo on the back of the headstock. I made numerous pickguards for it out of notebook covers before finding some polystyrene sheet (painted with leftover Testors from a model build).
After the finish, which had no clearcoat, began to look atrocious, I carefully removed and preserved the stickers and sanded it all down to wood (revealing an alder or basswood core sandwiched between plies of something else). Not quite sure how I wanted to refinish it, I opted to leave it natural and made a leather pickguard (died and handstitched edging on 7oz veg tan).
The body suffered a major crack from years of bending the neck for tremolo. I plan to repair the body and restore it to my original custom finish. This was my only guitar for the first 2 years, I had to wire it up myself from Day 1 and learned everything about guitar maintenance and mods from it (literally had to have a soldering iron and screwdriver around at all times to keep it playing). But in that first year we played in bars, outdoor venues, huge parties in my drummer's basement, and almost went to studio to cut a demo. Out of high school, I moved to Denver and left the band scene for solo composition, recording around 900 hours on this guitar. It even survived a car fire on the Interstate. Very grateful to still have this guitar and my late father's!
