New cheap guitar day- Cruiser by Crafter

DrJazzTap

About three weeks ago I went on a one day guitar set up course, led by James Collins. Due to lockdown i had to delay it by half a year.

I found the course extremely helpful. I've always wanted to set my own guitars up, but I've always been apprehensive about fiddling about on my own guitars.

I've consequently purchased the necessary tools and this.....

It's a Cruiser by Crafter Strat copy.

And in all honesty it's not half bad. It was literally two minutes from my house and cost me £40. Granted it was absolutely caked in grime and crud.

This is now going to be one of my training wheels (planning on picking up an epiphone les paul for the other team). I'm going to play around with changing gauges, different tunings and different actions etc.

I'm not sure if it's a chinese or korean model. It has a fairly sizeable dent in the fretboard, so i guess I need to fill that in with something?

It's got a 12 inch radius, which i've never tried on a strat before. I need to replace the pots and pickups (thinking hss) as the pots are knackered. For £40 I highly recommend one. I was looking at a squier and wasnt sure which one to go for, without spending more than i wanted to. These seem to be fairly well made.

I would really like to get into guitar repairs a bit more, as i found it relaxing. Next step is to have a go at soldering something!

TTony

DrJazzTap said:

It has a fairly sizeable dent in the fretboard, so i guess I need to fill that in with something?

If it’s a dent, rather than a chip, your first experiment could be to try steaming it out.

Dent = the wood is compressed, but it’s all still there.
Chip = there’s some material missing,

DrJazzTap

TTony said:

DrJazzTap said:

It has a fairly sizeable dent in the fretboard, so i guess I need to fill that in with something?

If it’s a dent, rather than a chip, your first experiment could be to try steaming it out.

Dent = the wood is compressed, but it’s all still there.
Chip = there’s some material missing,

Yeah mate it's a chip, a small chunk of wood missing.

TTony

In which case, some wood glue and sawdust (from a similar wood), mixed into a nice sticky gunk.  Then sanded flat.

DrJazzTap

TTony said:

In which case, some wood glue and sawdust (from a similar wood), mixed into a nice sticky gunk.  Then sanded flat.

Thank you so much, now to find some donor wood.

TTony

PM me your address.

That looks rosewood-esque?

steamabacus

I picked up a Cruiser by Crafter a few years back for £25. Like yours, grubby and grimy and also missing its knobs and switch tip. After a bit of cleaning and TLC it proved to be a perfectly good guitar. Good enough in fact that I spent a further £75 or so on new pickups (Tonerider), knobs and some roller string trees to replace the rusty originals. I did have to sand off the horrible garish logo though (and I might be mistaken but I seem to remember it including red and blue - which yours doesn't?)

Strangely, I could find no online record of which particular model it is. All I could find online from Cruiser by Crafter were 'clones' of the usual shapes - strat, tele, LP, maybe a PRS-alike? Mine is a an offset - part Jazz, part Telecaster so I've dubbed it the 'Jellycaster'.

Here it is, flattering shot  ...

and frontal shot so you can see the shape ...

It's currently on my worktable getting 'roughed up' a bit. I'm not a fan of shiny guitars so I've cut the gloss back to a matt sheen using a scotchbrite pad and discoloured the scratchplate a bit with a tea-bath (after preparing the surface with the scotchbrite).

Well worth the outlay and I've really bonded with it.

guitarjack66

DrJazzTap said:

About three weeks ago I went on a one day guitar set up course, led by James Collins. Due to lockdown i had to delay it by half a year.

I found the course extremely helpful. I've always wanted to set my own guitars up, but I've always been apprehensive about fiddling about on my own guitars.

I've consequently purchased the necessary tools and this.....

It's a Cruiser by Crafter Strat copy.

And in all honesty it's not half bad. It was literally two minutes from my house and cost me £40. Granted it was absolutely caked in grime and crud.

This is now going to be one of my training wheels (planning on picking up an epiphone les paul for the other team). I'm going to play around with changing gauges, different tunings and different actions etc.

I'm not sure if it's a chinese or korean model. It has a fairly sizeable dent in the fretboard, so i guess I need to fill that in with something?

It's got a 12 inch radius, which i've never tried on a strat before. I need to replace the pots and pickups (thinking hss) as the pots are knackered. For £40 I highly recommend one. I was looking at a squier and wasnt sure which one to go for, without spending more than i wanted to. These seem to be fairly well made.

I would really like to get into guitar repairs a bit more, as i found it relaxing. Next step is to have a go at soldering something!

Or 'soddering' as our US cousins like to call it.

DrJazzTap

TTony said:

PM me your address.

That looks rosewood-esque?

Thats very kind of you mate, I've got an old fence panel in the shed I'm gonna grab some wood from. 

@steamabacus that's very nice, I did have a look at yours before I went and grabbed this one. Good shout out on the string trees, for a couple of quid it's rude not to. 
I don't find the pickups overally offensive. The single coil positions have a lot of hum to them. I want to replace them with probably toneriders and some new pots. Possibly the trem and machine heads.

The logo on this one is silver with a red dot. 

Like yourself I tried to find some info online about them. Somebody alluded to the fact that they might be made by an old Korean squier builder. The squier range can be particularly haphazard. 

I wasn't sure whether to go for an affinity, a standard, vintage modified an se or a classic vibe. The budget was ideally sub £100, which put most of the squiers out of budget. 

Corvus

My boy's first guitar was one of these, apart from being quite weighty it's a nice-feeling guitar. I'd put it up with CV and VM Squiers of the time.
He painted it white and added lipsticks, had a few wiring changes and added a MIM trem because the original saddles wore & notched. He's gigged & recorded with it.

steamabacus

Yes, I'd agree that the quality of mine is on a par with any Squier I've played (and better than many). The pickups were ok - standard generic types with the plastic bobbins, steel slugs and ceramic bar magnet - but the Toneriders are a definite upgrade (proper alnico slugs, fibre flatwork, cloth hook-up cable).

No idea what the body 'wood' is as it's buried under a thick, plasticky layer of finish. A little bit weighty but nothing unmanagable.

A perfect platform for learning set-up etc on. Mine was the subject of my second attempt at cutting nut slots after buying a set of Hosco files. I'd always got an experienced tech to do any nut work for me in the past. The job went fine though (the slots weren't all that high to start with) and I'd be much more confident now working on a 'better' guitar.

Henrytwang

I bought a Cruiser by Crafter guitar from a car boot sale a few years ago for £10 ! It’s a BC Rich shaped thing in reasonable condition but I really disliked the neck shape when I got it home so I put it aside and forgot about it. This post has reminded me of its existence, I must dig it out and see if I’ve changed my mind about it.

gubble

I've a cruiser by crafter strat style guitar that my wife bought for me s/h a few years back (i think she paid £30). Looks just like yours but in Daphne Blue

I 'upgraded' the pickups with a loaded scratchplate from a Chinese website and the guitar plays and sounds great perfectly well.

Ok the sound and quality isn't up there with either of the Fenders i own, but it's not a bad guitar at all. Gigged it a number of times - held it's own.

DrJazzTap

gubble said:

I've a cruiser by crafter strat style guitar that my wife bought for me s/h a few years back (i think she paid £30). Looks just like yours but in Daphne Blue

I 'upgraded' the pickups with a loaded scratchplate from a Chinese website and the guitar plays and sounds great perfectly well.

Ok the sound and quality isn't up there with either of the Fenders i own, but it's not a bad guitar at all. Gigged it a number of times - held it's own.

Yeah that's the thing, I wanted to get to grips with polishing frets and playing around with the trem block rather than balls up my US standard. Henrytwang said:

I bought a Cruiser by Crafter guitar from a car boot sale a few years ago for £10 ! It’s a BC Rich shaped thing in reasonable condition but I really disliked the neck shape when I got it home so I put it aside and forgot about it. This post has reminded me of its existence, I must dig it out and see if I’ve changed my mind about it.

Yeah do it mate, kept me occupied on a rainy afternoon