Completed Finish and Assembly Project - Strat Shaped Body

BillDL

I obtained the following Stratocaster shaped non-Fender (uh, oh!) body along with the hardware and electrics from a member here through the classifieds.  It had previously been a gloss black body, but the owner had sanded it down, applied a black stain with the wood grain slightly visible through it, and had finished it with Tru Oil that was a bit rough and still needed flattening down and buffing.  The front pickup cavity had been enlarged to make HSH configuration possible.

My idea was to finish it in a metallic type lacquer with a hue of greenish blue or bluish green.  Not as shiny greeny green as Sherwood Green or as dark as British Racing Green but not as blue as Lake Placid Blue.  A darker and slightly greener shade of Ocean Turquoise was what I envisaged with a black pickguard in HH configuration with coil split.

I sanded it down removing all the Tru Oil and the majority of the stain, and in so doing I rounded over the corners a bit more than normal.  I realised that I needed to remove a little bit more wood from the front wall of the neck pickup cavity to allow the pickguard to fit around the bridge and up to the neck heel without the front of the pickup pressing against the wood.

I didn't have any body filler, so a couple of lightly deeper dings didn't fill to the surface completely with a few coats of sanding sealer but I wasn't after perfection.  I applied primer and it went on so well it didn't need flattening.  I followed it with Ocean Turquoise Metallic then misted on a very fine coat of clear gloss amber tint.  Blue + Yellow = a Greener shade than the blue.  I followed that with a very, very subtle edgeburst with black tinted clear gloss.

After quite a few clear coats to finish off I T-Cut and buffed it.

Annoyingly when I did a dry fit with the hardware all on I realised that I needed to elongate the socket cavity under the depth of the screw for the spring leaf of the socket to have enough sideways movement for a plug to go in and out.  A Dremel with small sanding drum allowed for this without damaging the finish around the cavity.

The pickups are Vanson Rockatrons (Alnico V 8.4K Bridge, Alnico II 7.6K Neck).  Just humbuckers with covers to make them look a bit like Filtertron styled pickups.  Although I'm sure they were never intended to sound anything like their appearance might imply, they do sound a little different to bog standard humbuckers.  There's more of a "ring" (hard to describe) to them and I think it may be the strip of metal in the middle of the cover creating a different sound.  Electrics are just 500K Log/Audio pots with a Push-Push for coil split on the tone pot.

The neck is a B-Stock due to the odd and unsightly knotting, but I'm sure it won't affect the integrity of the wood.

The guitar body changes hue in different lighting angles, sometimes looking more blue than green and sometimes vice versa.  The finished photos (still to fit string trees) are pretty representative of the colour.

Oh, and by the way, I don't normally splay the trem springs like that - just before somebody remarks on this.  The claw was screwed on slightly off-centre and one of the springs rubs lightly on the side wall of the cavity if stretched straight.

Winny_Pooh

Great colour and pickup choice

lovestrat74

Love that Bill! Very classy  

fretmeister

Great work!

Decorativeed

Nice. I love the colour.

BillDL

Thank you gents.  I was playing it tonight and it sounds great.  Even though the product description for these pickups on the Vanson website doesn't try to imply they are anything but vintage spec humbuckers with a fancy cover, they sound great in this guitar and the Alnico V in the bridge and Alnico II in the neck works very well.  How much of the difference in sound from what I would just call ordinary humbuckers is attributable to the body, neck and trem is something I don't know, because unamplified and also played clean the guitar has a hollow woody honkiness to it and a slight "sproinginess" clearly from the trem springs.  It just sounds and feels "alive".

I had a few issues with the neck, or should I say fretboard and frets.  They are stainless steel in blind ended slots with the semi-hemi end finish.  I assume these slots are cut on a CNC with a very fine bit that plunges down, moves across and withdraws.  I had a few abnormally high frets that I was able to tap back down to create very level frets, but in so doing the end fret bounced out the slot and two that I had tapped down previously popped back up at one end.  I would guess that all it takes is a blunt bit and you have slots that are just a little wide for the barbs on the fret tangs to bite into properly.  I glued and clamped down the offending frets and all it needed was the slightest skim over to level them, and polishing with fine wet & dry paper with my finger restored the rounded crowns.  In future I think I will avoid blind ended fret slots because I think less can go wrong with fine saw blades cutting slots all the way through.

ICBM

Beautiful colour.

You can put the springs straight if you move them to the 2 and 4 holes on the block as well .

BillDL

Thank you @ICBM.  I do love the colour as well, and I wish I had built a Tele and sprayed it the same finish as well.

I've messed about with the springs to get the feel that I like on the trem.  I just use it for atmospheric shimmer and wobble, so I don't have the bridge angled as much as people that need to raise the string pitch more.  I find that the more the bridge plate is angled up at the back the more susceptible it seems to be to other strings going flat when I bend a string.  I'm not imagining this because I've experimented a lot with 6-screw vintage and 2-point trems.  With the bridge plate at a lesser angle it doesn't do this nearly as much.  3 springs felt too hard and the springs were almost completely closed at the equilibrium point with 10s.  With two springs in a straight line in any of the holes and claws it felt a little looser than I like, but angling the springs from the outside holes in the block to the inner claw hooks stretched out the springs a tiny bit more and the trem action feels perfect now.

It's actually quite a good trem bridge this one. The one that came with the body is definitely the same ones as sold by Guitar Anatomy and also Musiclily on eBay and Amazon:

https://guitaranatomy.com/product/stratocaster-vintage-full-block-tremolo-kit/?v=7885444af42e

The only branding is "MVB" stamped on each of the vintage bent metal saddles.  "Mings Vibrato Bridge" perhaps (Ming Musical Instrument Trading Company)?  It's based on a Wilkinson design and I'm sure made by the same OEM, because the line drawings with dimensions published by sellers are Wilkinson drawings.

The bridge fitted to the guitar body had a fault.  The 5mm diameter arm was incredibly difficult to push in and pull out and that was even with the grub screw in the back of the block missing, but conversely had too much play up where it comes out the top of the bridge plate.  I dismantled it and found that the hard plastic bushing / collar into which the arm pushes was was a perfect and very snug fit for the hole in the block, but the internal hole for the arm was simply far too tight on the arm, and it wasn't because the sides where it is split at the top had been compressed inwards, it was tight further in.

The diameter of the thin part of the bushing / collar that fits up through the hole in the bridge plate had too much play in the hole.  Excuse my thumbnail, I had pakora earlier.  I sorted the issues by tightly rolling up a strip of 400 grit wet & dry and running it in and out of the full length of the hole in the hard plastic bushing then rubbing some candle wax on the arm and sliding it in and out a number of times.  To fix the play up at the top part I rolled a thin strip of some very thin metal sheet around a dowel to make a spacer that I glued around the rebate on the collar and it fitted tightly up into the hole in the bridge plate to take up the slack while still allowing the arm to slide in.  Fitting a grub screw and tightening it has made the arm absolutely wobble-free, but I had already bought another of the same bridge from Guitar Anatomy and that one is all a very nicely toleranced one.  At least I will know what to do if the new one gets loose over time.

I had to get a bridge with a 54mm string spread / 10.8mm spacing AND 10.8mm spacing on the mounting screws because the body was drilled for these spacings.  Most bridges with a 54mm string spread have the screws with a 56mm spread.  Although the Wilkinson WVP6 with its 5 oval holes and one round one supposely accommodates mounting screws with a spread between 54mm and 56.5mm, it doesn't.  I've tried it.

ICBM

That’s a lot of determination needed to fix what seems like a simple problem, but really isn’t! They must just have moulded that bushing wrong.

That WVP6 bridge design is a bodge - like quite a few of their designs, it doesn’t quite work. Trevor Wilkinson is a very clever guy and some of his stuff is brilliant, but some isn’t quite as good as it looks. At the very least, the problem with the 5/1 bridge holes is that it inevitably only lines up the low E string correctly - it would be better if the round hole was for either the D or G screw, then the outer holes could be even more oval and it would still work.

BillDL

Yeah I know, but I like to try and fix things rather than binning them and I have time to tinker since I retired 

Those were exactly my thoughts about the choice of placement for the one round hole on those "bodge" bridges, and with even more ovalled holes they would be like 5 separate flat knife-edged fulcrum points.

BillDL

I finally got around to doing something that I have thought about doing to all my Strat shaped guitars' back cover plates for a very long time, but for whatever reason I've never to committed to doing.  I'm now asking myself "Why the hell didn't you just do this sooner?".

My Levinson Blade has these elongated teardrop openings that allow access with a screwdriver to adjust the spring claw screws without having to remove the plate.  I am sure I have also seen other brands with a similar thing.  I had the idea long before I ever noticed this on any guitars and saw it up close on the Levinson.

Personally I see no need for them to be quite as long and wide at the claw end because if you need the screw head to travel anywhere near that distance you would most likely be removing or adding springs, in which case you would have the cover off.

I instead just looked at my guitar side-on with the screwdriver nicely into the screw head, marked where the shaft of the screwdriver would have to pass through the cover plate, then drilled pilot holes in line with the screws.  I then just used a larger drill bit straight through the pilot hole and angled it down as I drilled slowly.  It came out quite well and allows enough screw movement to accommodate for changing string gauge from 10s to 9s or 11s, should I ever wish to do so, but I've been using the new holes quite a bit while I fine-tune the trem height to suit.  That's fluff from a soft rag on the plastic, not scratches.

ICBM

BillDL said:

Robot is sad. What did Robot do wrong?

BillDL

I didn't even see that, but now I can't unsee it