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!
I would love to change my username, but I fully understand the T&C's (it was an old band nickname). So please feel free to call me Dave.
Comments
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.
Thank you so much, now to find some donor wood.
That looks rosewood-esque?
@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.
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.
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.