My old 69 Strat lives again !!

Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

mixedmedia said:
No worries. Whenever you get those photos sorted it should be interesting to see the journey.

What if you blur out the bits you don't want seen?
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Ah, Ok, here's the unedited pics of me in the poncho from last year after I bought the guitar back from Sydney, in the condition i recieved it after all those years. Hopefully you'll be laughing *with* me as much as *at* me, the pics were only in a moment of fun, i just happened to grab the guitar as it was nearby at the time and i felt kinda weird so it was just a kinda 'prop' in the silly pics. They were never meant to be seen, let alone be presented anywhere in the world of music, but hey, they're the only pics of it as i got it back last year before this huge renovation job. Sorry they're small, if they were bigger i could have cropped the pics down and still had a decent pic of the guitar without me, but this is all i have.

What you can't see because of the small pics is exactly how beaten up the body was, the finish was chipped away around a lot of the edges and there were dints and scars all over it. The neck is a Warmoth, but not the new one it now has (the Warmoth neck in these pics is from a different series and must have a 2-way truss rod as it's noticeably heavier and it has the small headstock). The 59N at the bridge was uncovered black bobbins, so it's pretty much invisible in these pics.

(BTW, tonight i'll take some shots of the back and try to get my scanner working to show you the pics as i had it back in '82-3).

Meantime, laugh away at these, guys, hehee.....
 
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Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

nice strat dude, kinda semi related im picking up an 80's strat body and fixing it up with a new neck soon just as a bordem thing and to see if i can do it. also do you enjoy playing it now? i hated strats for the longest time untill i found the right one (my white one with the black pearloid pickguard).

anyways sorry for the rant i get kinda excited when i see really nice guitars like this one
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

These are the only photographs of the Strat that i have from when I owned it originally. They would have been taken in 1982/3. 2 of the original photo's were of a bunch of instruments, after I scanned the pics i cropped just the Strat so the quality isn't great.

After i bought it (1980 IIRC) and removed the P90-style pickups and the Gibson LP-style p/up selector toggle, I'd set it up the way it appears in these pics, Duncan SSL 1's and regular Strat wiring on a chrome steel pickguard. The 'guard was already getting corroded by the time of these pics. Everything else was original at that point i think.

EDIT : I couldn't see in the original photograph, but since scanning it I have just noticed for the first time that it has a bullet truss-rod ! I'm sure they hadn't arrived in 1969, and seeing as the original neckplate serial number DOES date it as being a '69, the neck must have been a replacement. I don't know, it was long ago. I musta been having fun.......
 
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Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

oh dude where in melbourne are you from i lived there for 5 years and recently moved back to the states
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

Oudy said:
nice strat dude, kinda semi related im picking up an 80's strat body and fixing it up with a new neck soon just as a bordem thing and to see if i can do it. also do you enjoy playing it now? i hated strats for the longest time untill i found the right one (my white one with the black pearloid pickguard).

anyways sorry for the rant i get kinda excited when i see really nice guitars like this one
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Cool, and thank you. The guitar feels good, but it's weird....after spending so many hours working on every tiny detail I'm kinda TOO close with it, TOO inside, as if i have lost my perspective on it completely. Last few days I've deliberately only touched it every second day to just let myself get some perspective back. The wider fretboard is good for a lot of things i play, or attempt to, and the sound is great but still a work in progress (still tweaking pickup heights, etc, and have experimented with several smaller tone cap values).

Oudy, can i just say Go for it on the older body/ new neck pairing and if you don't already know it, it seems this is about the best way to get it all working properly........


Step 1 ..... The body will probably dictate where the bridge will be located if you use the original bridge style for the body. Go to step 2.

Step 2 ..... Bolt the neck (but not fully tightened) in and string up only the outside 'E' strings, low and high. Use the strings to make sure they are still in a good position where they cross the 21st fret, i.e. there is about an equal gap on each side between the string and the end of the fret. Move the neck from side to side until they line up well, then carefully tighten up the neck and check the alignment again. try playing some things on those outer strings just to make sure your fingers don't 'flip' the string around the edge and off the board.

Step 3 ..... LASTLY, drop the assembled scratchplate (pickups, electronics etc) into the rout and line the pole pieces of the pickups with the strings by looking straight-on at the guitar and sliding the pickguard around until you find the spot where everything lines up. Chances are that some of the screwholes won't line up so i fill all of them before using a new 'guard, then mark the locations for the new plate when it's lined up correctly.


Sorry to rave on there but I found that is the only way to do it, if you do those steps in any other order you can end up in a mess or re-doing stuff. Bridge dictates how the neck will align into the body, and that will then dictate where the scratchplate has to go. There'll always be lots of little things to deal with around those, but if you do a good job on those things you have the major issues covered.
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

meanwhile, *back* in 2009.......

(looks like I need a brown tortoiseshell trem cover plate to finish it off?)
 
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Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

I really like how you refinished and revived that Strat. It looks better than it did as a sunburst Strat.
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

Oh I love such restoration/modding projects.
Cool story too!

The more often than not end with the instrument being something much more closer and personal than what one could buy straight up from a shop...
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

Wow, i got to tell you guys how humbled I am by all the glowing comments. Thank you. Between these warm responses and the fact that I got this done in her 40th year, seems to make it all very special.

One memory i have.....1982....a drummer mate got me to mix a few gigs for the band he was playing in, a country-rock outfit with 2 sisters who sang with the most wonderful voices, both alone and in harmony. I hadn't really noticed, but one of them seemed to like me, and came to visit me at the house where i was living.....

.....that house was on the highway in a small-ish town, and some friends of mine were living there, they were a band, a good one. Most of them had day jobs, and i had the place to myself most days. I was sitting out the front on a couch on the verandah, playing the Strat, as i often did. It was summer and i fell asleep in the sun. That was when the girl singer from the band had come to visit me, and she told me much later how the first time she ever saw me at home i was asleep with this Strat laying across me. We became deeply attached from that day onwards and basically lived together from that day too. The Strat would turn up often with us as I'd get up and play with her band, she'd do the same with my band, and we'd get up and jam with other friend's at their gigs. I even have some tapes of songs from some of those gigs.

The girl loved an Aussie food product called 'Vegemite', usually eaten on toast. The hole near the Strat's top horn always bothered me, so i soaked the label off a Vegemite jar and stuck it over the hole, you can see it in a couple of those pics above of the guitar around that time, 1983. It was a kinda nod to her, and she dug the meaning of it. Amongst a few guitar-playing mates of mine, the guitar became affectionately known as 'the Vegemite Strat'.


ah, these have been the days of our lives .......hehehehehe
 
Re: My old 69 Strat lives again !!

Oh gawd, vegemite, and my now ex English GF's marmite...I love Australia, but I just could not make a go w/vegemite!

The remade 69 Strat is a different story, though.

A friend has a similar story w/his 73 Strat. Bought it new, sold to a friend in 80. Friend beat the bejesus out of it, broke the neck off twice, cracked the body in half once. It was already in a dumpster in Minneapolis when friend called him, and told him that it was in chunks in the dumpster, but would be glad to fetch it out, and return it to Green Bay next time he traveled there. Did so. It is now a wonderfully restored somewhat 73ish Strat.

Friend was me. I swear that gtr protests loudly when I visit my friend!
 
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