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The whole idea of it makes sense to me so long as you're not concerned about resale. To me all Fenders feel like something that's just been bolted together so might as well do it yourself to the exact specifications you want.
Other than the rebuilt fenders (and Leo's intention that fender necks should be replaced when worn) it really started with the burst of aftermarket parts in the mid 70's.
You can trace it through companies such as Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio, Schecter, Carvin which all helped give birth to a true partscaster ethos. Warmoth and Mighty mite were in place by the 80's.
Then there was a second burst caused by the growth of forums
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And Brian May's self build. It may have been a log way from a partscaster, but it probably a lot of people down the partscaster route when they started to research how to build a guitar. It certainly did with me
Maybe we should include the release of Melvyn Hiscock's "how to built your own electric guitar" as a turning point for many - again it covers full builds and partscasters as a way into it and was the best source of info for the pre/early-internet generation
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Football is rubbish.
But the big growth was the likes of Schecter, Mighty Mite, DiMarzio - later fueled by the Far Eastern invasion
My personal preference is to hot rod say a Squier or Tokai, or anything similar with a godo chassis - Highway 1's are a good example - As against buying a Warmouth/WD
What is really interesting is how many of these 'butchered' guitars have mirraculously vanished to re-emerge as pristine originals of a certain vintage.
There was a local musician to me when I was growing up, who had an early 60s Strat. This had been painted (using Holts Duplicolour paint from the local car accessory shop) in black, with a black headstock. It had a brass scratchplate containing a DiMarzio PAF neck pickup, a DiMarzio X2N bridge pickup and a DiMarzio Single coil (with hex head pole pieces), all controlled by mini toggle switches (including coil switching, phase and series/parallel). It had big frets (don't know about the radius. It had a Kahler trem (gold) and a gold/brass jack plate (engraved with his initials). It sounded like beast and he used it to play in local pubs in various covers bands.
He died about 12 years ago and the guitar was sold to a well-known local guitar dealer - and vanished. Although a while later he had a '62 that had a "older refinish" in aged Candy Red with a fresh refret with "vintage" frets - if you caught it in the right light, you could see the lines where a Kahler had been infilled... same guitar? Probably.
Point is, I guarantee it was a *better* guitar in modded form that it would ever be as a "restored" original guitar - by the time all the wood was 'put back' I'm sure it wouldn't resonate as nicely.
For me this is actually a crying shame.
Sadly, the market doesn't, because