https://i.imgur.com/v38UYe7.jpg
http://imgur.com/gallery/CPQkWNi
It started life as my first guitar, a 2006 Squier Affinity Strat that was in a starter pack. 13 years later I have moved on to bigger and badder guitars, of course I didn't want to just sell it, sentimental value and what not, but I wasn't gonna play it especially since I let the strings get all rusty and I mean, it's a beginner guitar.
I've always been on a budget and it was a big deal when I got my PRS, so in my efforts to get more and more guitars I found it to be a waste of a perfectly good chassis to not be getting played. So this year it became a platform on which to build.
As for changes I decided on a new bridge, loaded pickguard, tuning machines, and a slew of cosmetic changes. The bridge is one out of a Mexican Highway 1 Strat, the difficulty here is that the Squiers have a narrower string spacing, so it was a challenge to find a higher quality, heavier, stamped bridge with that spacing and as far as I know this is it. The tuners are from an American Standard Stratocaster that a guy took out so he could upgrade to locking ones. Before I purchased them I thought since they had the modern two peg design that they would bolt right in, but alas they did not. There is actually about a 1mm difference in the position of the pegs so it needed new holes screwed. I do not own a drill press so I did this with a harbor freight cordless drill with some starter holes punched in to prevent walking. The wood however was just so smooth that it was so hard to stop the drill from walking anyway. I have carefully taken the photos shown as to not feature the slightly crooked tuners lol.
The pickguard is obviously the fun part and I was able to snag a really slick one loaded with Alnico Vs for $50 when The STRATosphere was having some killer deals on Reverb around the holidays. Originally I was gonna go for a metallic gold pickguard like some of those Jazzmasters have but all I was able to find was this cheap red tortoise and I ended up really liking it. The pickups were probably made in Russia or something and they are spicy and punchy, which is very fitting for the grungy style the build focused on. So spicy in fact that I've started calling her Cholula.
As for the cosmetics I wanted to try my hand at relicing. The goal was to have an approachable guitar I could leave in my living room hooked up to a Boss Katana Air and not worry about it around guests and alcohol. So I thought relicing was the best was to accomplish it and I took it to my college's woodshop and begin to beat the shit out of it. Sanding down the high traffic areas turned out well but it left extra scratches on that needed to be filled with nail polish. I got a couple different blunt objects to put some dings in it, got a little carried away but whatever. Disaster struck when I tried to get a chipped away look on the belly-cut, stretching over to the front around the top horn. What got in the way that I didn't think would be a big deal was the super thick poly finish. I managed to get a thin scraper underneath it on the belly-cut and started chipping it off. It was flying off at insane speeds, dangerous for someone too rock n' roll to put on safety glasses. Also, poly finishes stick to the wood real good so some chips took wood with it. I got all the way to the end of the belly-cut until I realized it looked awful. I began to cut my losses by sanding it down best I could, all by had as to make it look like it had happened over time. The real question was how was I gonna cover up this chewed up naked alder. My girlfriend happens to be quite the artist so I showed her George Harrison's Strat and Jimi Hendrix's Monterey Strat and told her to go to work on the back. According to her, she got her inspiration from the cover art for Glass Animal's Zaba. The final cosmetic change is that I saw a unique opportunity to change the Squier logo to my name very easily and I thought while i was at it, I had changed enough to where it is now crafted in Ohio.
All in all, it was about a month long process. It came together into a Strat that I would describe as a very comfy punch to the face. I referred to it as a drift missile because it reminds me of how people take old Nissan S13s and throw a big junkyard motor into just do do big smoky drifts and burnouts, disregarding amenities or physical damage.
TL;DR: I had an awesome time turning my first guitar into a grungy Strat to leave in my living room.
(P.S. Sorry if I botched the logistics of the post with the links and stuff)
Submitted March 11, 2019 at 03:34PM by C4RT3RM1N4T0R https://ift.tt/2J4Hx5d
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