MetalManiac
Li'l Junior Member
Okay, one Maniac did his legwork on this so you don't have to.
Introducing "Phyllis" ;
This guitar turned out much better than my best expected plans.
I figure a new Deluxe American Strat is 1500.00.
Being the cheap ass maniac that I am, I wanted to assemble a guitar that would be even better than a 1500.00 American Deluxe Strat , for 1/5th less.
So.., I get a good Peavey Predator body and neck here form the highly esteemed BPSUL. ( thank you BPSUL)
The 90's Peavey Predator body is a fat thick huge chunk of solid quality Poplar wood.
I'm getting a boner.
Soooo...I take this excellent body and neck with really good leveled frets , and I toss pretty much every other POS it has in the dumpster.
The pickgaurd and pickups were swapped for a Fender Tortoise gaurd w/Seymour Duncan SSL-1's.
Then I find (by divine intervention) a solid steel block that mates to the proprietary bridge plate perfectly.know I know what it is.Noone else does.
So then, the crummy POS tuners are replaced with Japanese Gotohs.
relatively painless.
Then there is a a horrible break angle on the stock guitar with the measley string trees, so I put in replacement Fender roller string trees. drilled two holes in the wrong places.
The cheap saddles are die cast, so I order and install solid steel saddles which are a perfect fit!
Put a Graphite nut on it. Chipped the fingerboard and some of the headstock right around the nut taking off the old nut, but reglued, sanded and put some tung oil over it ..you can barely even tell. without any issue.
Then I get a Solid steel tremolo arm ( not cheap pot metal) to go into the steel block.
It didn't take much setting up. I had to tweak the truss rod to get some relief. I had to tighten all the screws down on the body to alleviate any pitch shift.
I adjusted the saddles and and tightened the tuning keys, Loosened and realigned the neck to square thr strings, and tightened it back down securely without any movement of concern of instability..and then cranked the doohickey that tilts the neck just snug , and checked every damn thing down to the tightness of the input jack nuts.
This thing is SOLID..and I feel confident after playing that it will not only meet the specs of a Fender American Deluxe, but EXCEED them!
Introducing "Phyllis" ;
This guitar turned out much better than my best expected plans.
I figure a new Deluxe American Strat is 1500.00.
Being the cheap ass maniac that I am, I wanted to assemble a guitar that would be even better than a 1500.00 American Deluxe Strat , for 1/5th less.
So.., I get a good Peavey Predator body and neck here form the highly esteemed BPSUL. ( thank you BPSUL)
The 90's Peavey Predator body is a fat thick huge chunk of solid quality Poplar wood.
I'm getting a boner.
Soooo...I take this excellent body and neck with really good leveled frets , and I toss pretty much every other POS it has in the dumpster.
The pickgaurd and pickups were swapped for a Fender Tortoise gaurd w/Seymour Duncan SSL-1's.
Then I find (by divine intervention) a solid steel block that mates to the proprietary bridge plate perfectly.know I know what it is.Noone else does.
So then, the crummy POS tuners are replaced with Japanese Gotohs.
relatively painless.
Then there is a a horrible break angle on the stock guitar with the measley string trees, so I put in replacement Fender roller string trees. drilled two holes in the wrong places.
The cheap saddles are die cast, so I order and install solid steel saddles which are a perfect fit!
Put a Graphite nut on it. Chipped the fingerboard and some of the headstock right around the nut taking off the old nut, but reglued, sanded and put some tung oil over it ..you can barely even tell. without any issue.
Then I get a Solid steel tremolo arm ( not cheap pot metal) to go into the steel block.
It didn't take much setting up. I had to tweak the truss rod to get some relief. I had to tighten all the screws down on the body to alleviate any pitch shift.
I adjusted the saddles and and tightened the tuning keys, Loosened and realigned the neck to square thr strings, and tightened it back down securely without any movement of concern of instability..and then cranked the doohickey that tilts the neck just snug , and checked every damn thing down to the tightness of the input jack nuts.
This thing is SOLID..and I feel confident after playing that it will not only meet the specs of a Fender American Deluxe, but EXCEED them!
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