On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

[penguinmessiah]

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Factory-Buyout-Clearance-Sale_c_411.html
https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=243850&page=3

So, most of you surely know about GuitarFetish.com's crazy B-Stock purchase. You can read about it at the above link, but the short version is that they bought several PALLETS of discarded, unwanted and otherwise not-for-sale bodies and necks. All of these came from a factory that builds guitars to order for many of the major guitar manufacturers. These here are all of your 'made in Asia' models. They are posting about 30 necks and 30 bodies a week, for $30-40 a piece. None are in mint condition, but for the price they are a steal.

Having never assembled a guitar before, I hesitated for a while before purchasing a body and a neck which, based on my limited guitar knowledge, would fit! This thread will chronicle the assembly of what I will call my 'monstrosistrat'.

About two weeks ago I finally made my purchase. I bought :

- Transparent Blue HSS Double Cutaway Body With Binding $36
- Maple Neck Rosewood Fingerboard Blue Finished Headstock $25

The neck was advertised as a 25.5". A scale length was not given for the body, but upon researching that 'strat' type bodies most commonly have the same scale length, I decided to take the risk. If I was wrong, then for $30 I could order the neck that actually fit. Less than a week later the package arrived.

The neck is near flawless, and the body has just a couple of big dings. No big deal. The body seems to be mahogany with a top that I suspect is maple. I am no wood expert, however, so I may be wrong. Although supposedly the same size as the neck pocket, the neck did not quite fit, which meant that I had to sand it down to size - not really a big deal. The top of the fretboard seems to be pretty high off the surface of the guitar top, which means that I will probably have to sand some material from the bottom of the neck joint to lower the strings.

The body is routed for a standard HSS pickup setup, with what seems to be a 'fender' type tremolo bridge. Upon considering my options, I chose to order a 'top loading' hardtail bridge. I did this because I don't feel the need for another tremolo guitar (I already have a HSS strat with trem) and because a string-through trem bridge was not feasible, as the tremolo rout was directly in line with where the string through holes should be. So thus I discovered my first mistake - KNOW YOUR BRIDGE ROUTS. Hopefully the string/bridge/coupling will not be compromised by the routing.

I chose some 'gotoh-style' gold tuners to go with my hardtail bridge (also gold) and I am currently awaiting their arrival later on in the week, when I will install them and then tackle the neck/body assembly. It seems that getting the body aligned perfectly with the neck before drilling/bolting will be a pretty significant challenge for a first timer. I am also not sure where to acquire exactly the right kind of neck bolt, though as soon as I figure out the bolt size a trip to the hardware store should set me on the right track.

Having studied my parts I have come to realize that I was pretty lucky that these matched as well as they did. The body is clearly designed to accept a 24 fret neck, which I did not account for when purchasing. The colours are also about as close as I could hope to find.

My current plan, post assembly, is to install an old epiphone humbucker I have lying around to get a feel for it - then decide on a high output humbucker and single coil set to make this my 'metal' guitar. I hope to get the pickups used (hopefully duncans) to keep the cost down. My current outlay is as follows :

Body & Neck $80
Bridge & Tuners $50

If I can keep my pickups down to $100 or so, then I will complete my build for about $250! Also, if I am happy with the axe, then in the back tremolo rout which will remain unused, I plan to install an onboard distortion unit. I have home built RAT and BIG-MUFF type pedals which could go nicely in a 'metal' guitar - especially a cobbled together 'mad scientist' type one.

So I will post here also a couple of questions I had.

What pickups would you recommend?
What is the guitar body? (The neck is supposedly and ARIA - thanks TheLivingDead)
Any further recommendations on assembly & parts?

Thanks!!!

Mika

 

[JOLLY]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I dig the color.

 

[uOpt]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

That neck looks like high quality.

 

[dominus]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Get a 6 screw Strat bridge and get a dowel rod to fill the existing holes. The Strat bridge will just about cover up the dowels, and then just use a dark blue and black marker to color it in as best you can.

 

[TheLivingDead]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Lovin' it, dude.

I wish we definitely knew what the body wood is. Is it heavy? If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably basswood. Not a bad thing mind you! But yeah, get her set up and slap some cheap pups in there to get a tonal feel for the guitar, then it should be a little easier to decide what kinda nice pups should go in there.

Keep us posted on her progress!

 

[Kam]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I really like the grain on the top of that thing.

Seems like a cool project, dude. Best of luck with it. :beerchug:

 

[guitarrob]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Thanx for the link, I need a new project. Maybe a custom LP might be in the cards.

Good luck with your guitar.

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Alright, so the parts came in - and with a little trial and a LOT of error, the guitar was assembled.

I went with some decent quality tuners (~$30) and a very cheap bridge (~$14), both gold. The tuners gave me no problem at all, the bridge was a different story. The bridge was the only non-tremolo non string-through-body bridge I could find cheaply, so that decision was pretty much made for me...

My first task was to get the neck to fit the neck pocket. I sanded a minute amount at a time from either side of the neck 'heel' area until it fit snuggly. After my parts arrived I measured, re-measured and measured again to make sure my bridge was located correctly. The pre-drilled and routed body made this more difficult than it otherwise would have been, as the mounting holes in the bridge actually were to be located on the tremolo holes and tremolo rout. This necessitated drilling my own mounting holes in part of the bridge. After mounting my bridge, I measured the saddle height and compared it with the height of the fretboard. The fretboard was too high, which meant before joining the neck I had to sand more wood off the bottom of the heel.

With everything ready to attach the neck, I checked as best I could the straightness of the neck before drilling the neck holes (through the pre-drilled holes in the body). I then attached the neck and body with some screws from the hardware store, tightened HARD and then inspected my work!

D'oh!

My neck was not straight! Apparently in the process of sanding down the sides they had ended up slightly skewed, which meant that the neck was leaning slightly to the right. This put the high E string barely over the fretboard - obviously unplayable. I thought about my options, removing more wood from the neck heel or filling in the neck pocket... but considering my obvious lack of woodwork experience, I chose the easy option. I moved the bridge. With the neck in place, figured where the bridge should be to keep the strings above the fretboard and simply mounted it there! This placed the strings very slightly off centre to the body of the guitar, which I can live with at this point.

Finally, I strung up my guitar, fooled around with set-up for a while until...

D'oh!

It would not intonate correctly. My careful measuring and scale length calculation was for naught. The adjustable saddles would not move far enough back to intonate correctly, so the unfortunate but obvious solution was : move the damn bridge again! I de-strung the guitar, measured some saddle distances and moved the bridge to where it should be ... right OVER the tremolo rout. At this point I put the guitar down and called it a day.

The next day I took a further look at my problem. The bridge had to be mounted directly over the rout for correct intonation. The top wood on either side of the rout was thin, surely less than ten millimetres but not by much. I didn't really have a choice, so the bridge was positioned, drilled, and mounted directly over the tremolo rout. I re-strung the guitar, fooled with action, intonation, truss rod and saddle height. Finally I tuned all my strings and hit a big G chord and heard sweet musical nirvana! Finally!

Above, you can see the bridge mounted on top of the tremolo rout.

Sanded heel and sweet hardware store screws and washers.

Close up of bridge. If you compare the positions of both E strings to the humbucker routs, you can tell that it is slightly off centre.

Tuners and headstock.

Earlier today I started fooling with my old Epiphone pickup that I had planned as a tester, but I found that it was apparently dead. It's not a big loss, as it was not likely to be permanently installed in the guitar, but it does make my pickup choices a little tougher. I can either ebay another really cheap pickup as a tester or go ahead and buy something nice and hope it works out. I'm not really sure which path to choose at the moment, but I definitely plan on mulling that over for the next week or so before choosing.

So for now I'm going to let the strings sit on there for a while and let the new 'edge' go off them so I can compare it to my other guitars. I have the exact same set of strings on my Epiphone LP, so I can get a rough idea of feel/sound when they break in.

So there you have it. Guitar assembly : not as simple as I expected! Anyone surprised?

 

[Stratovarious]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Go the GFS route with the pickups too!

 

[TheLivingDead]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I admire your spirit, sir! I probably would've blown it off for a couple months. Nice job.

And as for pickups, why not go the used route? Best way to get maximum bang for your buck. If you're unsure of what you'd like, just make a thread in the pickup lounge describing what you're after. I'm sure someone could help ya!

 

[sstanfield]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Looks good!
I would get a gold neck plate w/ gold screws from Guitar Fetish or Stewmac, both for only $11.

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I actually looked long and hard for the screws I needed on guitar parts stores. This has something like an Ibanez 'All access neck joint' which is very different to your usual 'fender' type neck joint. Still never figured out what the body was meant to be - nor what wood it was.

Interestingly, although I was dubious about placing the bridge over the tremolo rout, the combination of thin wood it is mounted on, and the fact the fact that a large portion of the bridge is actually above the rout and therefore not in contact with wood give it a really loud and warm acoustic tone. It seems the bridge itself acts as a very small acoustic guitar top! I don't know how or if it will affect the tone through a pickup, but it's definitely interesting!

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

So, progress was made!

I poked around at my 'broken' Epiphone humbucker, when I found a wire that was not connected to anything. I touched it to various other parts of the humbucker until I got DC resistance on my multimeter and soldered it there. It turned out it was a ground wire from one of the coils. I had surely disconnected it when pulling off the cover (the pickup would not fit in the pickup cavity with the metal cover still on). So I now had a pickup that worked!

The pickup in question is the bridge pickup from an Epiphone LP Standard, near 10 years old. The DC resistance is near 14k, and it is apparently a 'HOTCH' model. The reason I have the spare pickup is because I replaced it and it's neck brother with a P-Rail & Triple Shot setup - but that is another story. Obviously, however, it is not a great sounding pickup because

a) It is an Epiphone and
b) (more obviously) I replaced it!

Lacking the right sized pots, I wired the pickup directly to the jack. Conveniently, the hole for the tone/volume pot is apparently very close to 1/4" because I can plug in through either of those holes so my cable doesn't have to hang from my less than impressive soldering job. Ingenuity or stupidity? You decide.

So now I have noise! Victory is mine! Below I linked to a short demo video of what I can currently get out of it. I tried to vary my styles and distortion levels to get a better idea of the range of the pickup. I'm playing through a Pod XT Live emulating a Hiwatt, with some compression and later a Big Muff type fuzz. Despite being happy with the quality of the neck, the nut will clearly need some work - you will hear the lower strings going out of tune badly when I finger certain chords. The 'amp' setting are medium to high drive (I change it half way through) and treble way up around 9 or so. Everything else is near centre.

https://vimeo.com/51400858

I've spent some time looking into the origins of my body, and it seems very similar to an ibanez S-series, though I haven't found exactly the same colour/wood grain combination. Still have no freaking idea what wood it is.

So the next step is selecting permanent pickups. This is where I would like some help. I am looking for suggestions for a high output humbucker with a lot of clarity, and two single coils to match. This guitar will be my 'metal' guitar. I am open to all makes and brands, but I am definitely planning on picking something up used, in keeping with the 'budget' nature if the project. When I find out what I might be looking for I will start looking on ebay and open up a thread in the Trading Post.

So once again, thanks for the input. I hope you are enjoying or learning from my troubles!

 

[TheLivingDead]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Sweet, dude! Can't wait until you get her rockin' properly!

 

[KeeperOS]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I didn't have the time to read the whole thread but I strongly suspect that you must have had intonation problems after installing the bridge and here's why:
The neck is 24 frets while the body, including the bridge post routes, was built for a 22-fretted neck. My guess is that you will have to move the entire bridge assembly closer towards the neck to compensate, just be glad you went with the hardtail, otherwise you would have had to dowel and re-drill the entire bridge route.

As it stands, as long as the bridge doesn't come too close to the bridge pickup route (and you wood-mount the pickups instead of using a ring) you might have a chance of saving it, although I am uncertain how the pickups will sound so much closer to the bridge.

Anyways, I guess for 50-60 USD that you bought those it's a nice project

CheerS!

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I didn't have the time to read the whole thread but I strongly suspect that you must have had intonation problems after installing the bridge and here's why:
The neck is 24 frets while the body, including the bridge post routes, was built for a 22-fretted neck. My guess is that you will have to move the entire bridge assembly closer towards the neck to compensate, just be glad you went with the hardtail, otherwise you would have had to dowel and re-drill the entire bridge route.

As it stands, as long as the bridge doesn't come too close to the bridge pickup route (and you wood-mount the pickups instead of using a ring) you might have a chance of saving it, although I am uncertain how the pickups will sound so much closer to the bridge.

Anyways, I guess for 50-60 USD that you bought those it's a nice project

CheerS!

I actually went through a lot of trouble getting the bridge mounted correctly for the right intonation. I just measured the bridge to pickup distance - 27mm on this one and 30mm on my MIM Fender strat. Doesn't seem like a huge difference.

My newest problem was buying the jack plate - I had assumed I would need a 'fender' style jack plate, but apparently this particular body is drilled for a 'long threaded barrel jack'. Which is the first time I have ever heard that such a thing existed.

Back to the guitar parts stores...

 

[donnievaz]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

That top looks like Ash to me. Definitely not Maple.

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

Yeah since the earlier days of this thread I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the body is ash or something very similar. At least the top, anyway - the grain showing on the back seems ENTIRELY different to the grain on the front.

I neglected to way the body separately, but it's significantly lighter than both my alder strat and my mahogany LP.

 

[BloodRose]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I actually looked long and hard for the screws I needed on guitar parts stores. This has something like an Ibanez 'All access neck joint' which is very different to your usual 'fender' type neck joint. Still never figured out what the body was meant to be - nor what wood it was.

Interestingly, although I was dubious about placing the bridge over the tremolo rout, the combination of thin wood it is mounted on, and the fact the fact that a large portion of the bridge is actually above the rout and therefore not in contact with wood give it a really loud and warm acoustic tone. It seems the bridge itself acts as a very small acoustic guitar top! I don't know how or if it will affect the tone through a pickup, but it's definitely interesting!

I have a body that I believe came from an old Kramer that has the same kinda slanted heel..

Very cool! you could end up with your own 5150! A piece toghter that slays!

 

[penguinmessiah]

Re: On-the-Cheap Strat Build Thread.

I have a body that I believe came from an old Kramer that has the same kinda slanted heel..

Very cool! you could end up with your own 5150! A piece toghter that slays!

Yeah! A sweet cobbled together axe just like Eddie. If only they sold talent at stewmac! :lol: