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A few months a go I did a trawl of London guitar shops and played a load. One guitar that really impressed me a lot was the Suhr Alt T with Thornbuckers (really bright PAF style tones). Played really well and especially the clear Pete Thorn signature humbuckers were focused and chimey, not muffly and middy. The Alt T is obviously a £2+k guitar. But I thought about making something like it wiht those Thornbuckers.
I used this 2016 pre-owned MIM Standard I bought cheaply as a basic mod vehicle base. Here's what I did.
Neck: polished frets; rolled and sanded the fretboard edges; re-cut and reshaped the nut; sanded and smoothed the rosewood board with fine wire wool, ebonised and oiled it for a dark look consistent with the gloss black body; sanded down the gloss to a natural wood feel; sanded to raw wood the heel of the neck and pocket for maximum contact.
Body: filled and repainted a chunk missing out of the paintwork;changed the pickguard to a dark redbrown tort.
Pickups: replaced the Fender split coil humbuckers (which were actually pretty usable in single coil mode with the tone pot rolled back but too middy and rawk-hot for me in humbie mode). Replaced with Suhr Thornbuckers in raw nickel finish 53mm spacing on the bridge and 50mm on the neck. Kept the pots switch and all the hardware it was OK. Suhr use Seymour Duncan colour scheme which is different to Fenders.
Bridge: Replaced the bent steel saddles Strat one. It didn't rattle, but lacked solidity. Fitted a Callaham replacement with brass Tele saddles including replacement short screws. The difference is striking: definition, sustain and improved low end.
Pickups and bridge were nearly £300 - more than I'd normally put into a cheapy, but I really wanted the Thornbuckers and the bridge difference is night and day different.
The result is a Tele with humbuckers that retains some of the the bright Tele snap and attack. It's a little like a bright SG in terms of where it sits in the mix and plays. It has a bit of old school PAF quack. With a really low action big frets and 9.5 radius means it's a good one for widdle and earnie lead stuff.
Quick sound clips using Yamaha THR direct. Same simple riff, bridge, middle, neck first clean-ish then a bit crunchy.
(clean then crunch)
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Thank you. This is what it was like originally ...forgot to include...
I wouldn't know where to start, every time I look up the techniques for rolling edges people say it sort of ends up more scalloped because of the frets but yours looks perfect
One of my most used tools is a fine general file. Flat on one side curved the other.
The first thing I did use sandpaper to take off the gloss finish all over the neck - back and sides.
Then used the fine file to carefully take off the square edge making it more rounded. A little goes a long way.
Then I used sand paper and wire wool to smooth.
Finally used the rounded side of a large screwdriver to compress the rolled edges.
I used mostly fine wire wool grades for the fretboard prep. Then used ebony leather stain. Wire wool between a couple of coats. Then very very light application of tru oil to seal the stain. Then rubbed back, finally bore oil and rubbing.
Done this a few times. It's about four hours of work not including drying times.
when I've read the discussions on rolling the edges it seems the fret ends are the problem, as in you can get the wood rounded down smooth but the frets still protrude somewhat, did you find this with yours?
The trick is you are just taking a little off the squared edge as I said "A little goes a long way" it's just to make it comfortable and smooth not a circle.
As you can see in pic 7, it's subtle. In any case, fret ends too can be (and should be if required) filed and smoothed.
The effect of sanding the edges of the fretboard first also takes off any poorly finished / sharp fret ends you can get on MIMs and less well finished guitars.
Big +1 to rolling fretboard edges. I don't know why more folks & brands don't make more of this as a "thing" - for me it's essential on an unbound neck. I would go slightly further than you have in that pic, but only very very slightly!
I use the edge of a Stanley blade to just very accurately take off that corner and not any more, then a couple of grades of micromesh to polish.
So why not done? It's because its a fine hand labour task and therefore expensive even with reduced labour costs in those locations .
And thanks for the Stanley knife idea - not tried that method.
Give you £50 for it?
I'm deffo going to attempt it on my strat at some point but I'll probably buy a cheapo to do a first go I reckon
thanks for posting though coz it's really helpful
I think a bit of work on the neck like this thread and then maybe one day a cool relic paint job for the body is as close to CS as I'll ever get