TexMax
New member
Guitars are funny things…..
My first ‘real’ guitar was a birthday gift from my parents. It was a brand spanking new 1979 white on (vintage) white maple necked Strat, picked out by my 13yr old self at Evans Music in Houston, Tx. $600 – plenty pricey at that time. I played it through various amps all through high school and it wasn’t until a handful of years later that it finally dawned on me - that that guitar was a total dog!! Heavy heavy heavy ash body with a super thick urethane finish and tiny little square top fender frets. It sounded thin and terrible and had no sustain and played even worse – just one of those nightmare late 70’s Strats.
Fast forward another handful of years to the early ‘90s and I am now living and playing in Austin and making my own bodies for fun. I had designed my own jag/jazzmaster/surfcaster hybrid shape and slapped Warmoth necks and Seymour Duncans (nothin’ but humbuckers back in the day) on them. I experimented a lot and took great care in choosing the woods – alder, heavy and lightweight ash, mahogany, mahogany with maple tops – and I always tended to prefer the lighter weight guitars in the end. While I was no master luthier, I wasn’t half bad and out of around 50 or so bodies that I made during that time I ended up with a handful that were actually quite good. Interestingly, the thing I learned making my own bodies was that when building bolt-on neck Fender-style guitars, there is just no accounting for the ‘magic’ or ‘fairy dust’ that gets sprinkled on some guitars and not others. Wood type, grain, weight, etc. etc. just almost didn’t seem to matter as much as just pure luck. Slap one neck on a body, nothing, slap it on another, bam, you got something. Play a room full of Strats or Teles and you may find a special one or two. I know it works very differently for well-crafted neck through guitars but they are a very different type and I preferred the Fender styled, so I never quite made it there.
Now fast forward to the present – I live in NYC and don’t have the space to build guitars from scratch, so I assemble them from parts.
I buy an Alder American Standard Deluxe body off Ebay a few months ago that weighs in at 4lbs 2oz. Nice and light. I slap on one of my old Warmoth one-piece maple necks with 6105 frets (that are in excellent shape) and outfit it with Sperzel locking tuners. Hhhhmmmm, guitar is starting to feel a bit on the heavy side….. I then load neck and middle SSL-2s that I have had sitting in a box for god knows how long. Next, I buy off Ebay one of the new Fender copper-infused high-mass block two point tremolos with the bent saddles and that shows up in the mail this past Thursday. My Antiquity Surfer Custom Bridge had been delivered the day before after sending a Vintage Hot Stack Plus back to SD in exchange. I install those two final pieces and the guitar is now…..heavy. Heavy. I won’t venture to guess just how heavy it is, but it’s not even medium-heavy, but decidedly just downright heavy for a Strat.
So I string ‘er up with 10’s and……… ****! I might have something here….! After spending the weekend adjusting and tweaking, I now have one of the best guitars I have ever owned. I know it is the honeymoon phase and imperfections will come to light over time, but in my experience, guitars either got mojo or they don’t. And this one’s got it in spades. Fantastic sustain, excellent note clarity, well balanced tone with a big round bottom end and not at all overly bright, even with the maple neck. It is like one of those rare, good, heavy, maple-necked 70’s Strats or Teles that you stumble across in the high end guitar shops where the guys really know their **** and have amassed some really fine instruments that are not just collectable museum pieces.
So….I do have mixed emotions though – it is a really heavy guitar and I have been playing ones on the lighter side for a long time. But ****, what a guitar….
Go figure….
My first ‘real’ guitar was a birthday gift from my parents. It was a brand spanking new 1979 white on (vintage) white maple necked Strat, picked out by my 13yr old self at Evans Music in Houston, Tx. $600 – plenty pricey at that time. I played it through various amps all through high school and it wasn’t until a handful of years later that it finally dawned on me - that that guitar was a total dog!! Heavy heavy heavy ash body with a super thick urethane finish and tiny little square top fender frets. It sounded thin and terrible and had no sustain and played even worse – just one of those nightmare late 70’s Strats.
Fast forward another handful of years to the early ‘90s and I am now living and playing in Austin and making my own bodies for fun. I had designed my own jag/jazzmaster/surfcaster hybrid shape and slapped Warmoth necks and Seymour Duncans (nothin’ but humbuckers back in the day) on them. I experimented a lot and took great care in choosing the woods – alder, heavy and lightweight ash, mahogany, mahogany with maple tops – and I always tended to prefer the lighter weight guitars in the end. While I was no master luthier, I wasn’t half bad and out of around 50 or so bodies that I made during that time I ended up with a handful that were actually quite good. Interestingly, the thing I learned making my own bodies was that when building bolt-on neck Fender-style guitars, there is just no accounting for the ‘magic’ or ‘fairy dust’ that gets sprinkled on some guitars and not others. Wood type, grain, weight, etc. etc. just almost didn’t seem to matter as much as just pure luck. Slap one neck on a body, nothing, slap it on another, bam, you got something. Play a room full of Strats or Teles and you may find a special one or two. I know it works very differently for well-crafted neck through guitars but they are a very different type and I preferred the Fender styled, so I never quite made it there.
Now fast forward to the present – I live in NYC and don’t have the space to build guitars from scratch, so I assemble them from parts.
I buy an Alder American Standard Deluxe body off Ebay a few months ago that weighs in at 4lbs 2oz. Nice and light. I slap on one of my old Warmoth one-piece maple necks with 6105 frets (that are in excellent shape) and outfit it with Sperzel locking tuners. Hhhhmmmm, guitar is starting to feel a bit on the heavy side….. I then load neck and middle SSL-2s that I have had sitting in a box for god knows how long. Next, I buy off Ebay one of the new Fender copper-infused high-mass block two point tremolos with the bent saddles and that shows up in the mail this past Thursday. My Antiquity Surfer Custom Bridge had been delivered the day before after sending a Vintage Hot Stack Plus back to SD in exchange. I install those two final pieces and the guitar is now…..heavy. Heavy. I won’t venture to guess just how heavy it is, but it’s not even medium-heavy, but decidedly just downright heavy for a Strat.
So I string ‘er up with 10’s and……… ****! I might have something here….! After spending the weekend adjusting and tweaking, I now have one of the best guitars I have ever owned. I know it is the honeymoon phase and imperfections will come to light over time, but in my experience, guitars either got mojo or they don’t. And this one’s got it in spades. Fantastic sustain, excellent note clarity, well balanced tone with a big round bottom end and not at all overly bright, even with the maple neck. It is like one of those rare, good, heavy, maple-necked 70’s Strats or Teles that you stumble across in the high end guitar shops where the guys really know their **** and have amassed some really fine instruments that are not just collectable museum pieces.
So….I do have mixed emotions though – it is a really heavy guitar and I have been playing ones on the lighter side for a long time. But ****, what a guitar….
Go figure….
