For a wile I have been missing some key guitars in my arsenal but I couldn’t put my finger on it . for the last couple of years I have just been playing metal and hard rock . I was happy with my metal setup I had a engl powerball ,schecter hellraiser , Ibanez egen8 and a few pedals in between. I did have a more complex rack mounted rig but it was to much faff.

Recently I was asked to join a quite successful covers band who played anything and everything so I needed a more versatile rig . this was the point wen I realised that I needed some more guitars. I love fender strats so the fist no brainer choice was a nice American deluxe strat but when I was looking at buying one there was nothing that quite suited me perfectly . I wanted a telecaster as well , I already had a Mexican one but I wanted one with a bit more grit . at this point I thought what the heck I will just build two dream guitars up . I have built a couple guitars up in the past but these two guitars were going to be perfect.

I started by buying the 2 guitar bodies

A 1981 telecaster American standard body

A 1978 Stratocaster American body

When I purchased the two guitar bodies they were both in a ruff shape . my first step was to strip the paint with nitromoors paint stripper . the telecasters paint reacted well to the chemical stripper but the Stratocaster must have had a different type of lacquer on it witch the stripper had no effect on . I took the Stratocaster and sanded all the paint off, it was a long process but it was quite rewarding. I didn’t sand the guitars back to the wood due to the fact that that the new primer would adhere better to the old paint than to the wood. For the small imperfections that were left I used isopon p38 bondo ,but this was only used as a last resort because I didn’t want to spoil the overall tone of the guitars .After the main sanding was done I got the bodies ready for paint by using tack cloths and pre paint wipes . I mounted the bodies on d.i.y. hooks on a 1”x0.5” wood strips.

I decided that I would paint these guitars in candy apple red , I have always loved the colour and who doesn’t want a red strat? . I used a metallic silver as the base for the paint (fords moon dust silver) and each guitar got 4 coats of this paint

I wanted a bright candy colour on these guitars so only three cotes of candy red were shot

I went a bit mad on the lacquer giving the guitars six coats of good quality 2-pack (not to be mistaken for the rapper) lacquer.

TOP TIP : if you are ever putting clear over candy paint , add a small bit of the candy colour to the clear . this will help the candy pop more when it is in the light.

Getting a good finish on the guitar

Allot of people say you should start to cut into the lacquer 12 hours after they have been sprayed with 600 grit. I left the paint 24 hours to go off due to the amount of coats I had put onto each body. I started with 400 wet to get a good key into the paint , it is very scary when you do this you think you will never get a good finish back. Hear is my proses of getting a good finish;

400/wet

600/wet

800/wet

1200/wet (spent the most time with this grit getting any uneven paint and orange peal).

1500/wet

1800/wet

2000/wet

g3 medium cutting compound

2500 grit

g3 medium cutting compound

g3 fine compound

Maguire’s ultimate compound ( this stuff is magic).

Check out the pics below for my polishing equipment.

I was very impressed with the overall finish of the guitars , what do you think?

Guitar necks

I have recently purchased the two guitar necks for the build , I went with the mighty might brand due to there high quality necks . I did contact fender custom shop about getting two genuine replacement necks but they wanted far to many details about the guitars I was putting the necks on , plus there prices were extortionate . the two mighty might necks cost me £240 and they are both of the C profile variety . i also sourced 4 fender headstock decals , these decals are a pain to put on but they look the part . I first practiced on a spare squire neck I had lying around . I messed the first one up but I nailed the second one . after I had adhered the decals to the headstock I sealed them with some matt lacquer , this protects the decals and smooths out the edges.

After I had finished the necks I couldn’t Waite to put them on the bodies , check out the pictures at the bottom of the page , what do you think ?

Shielding

I am still not sure to go for noiseless or conventional pickups so I went ahead and shielded all the pickup and trem cavities . I did this by using aluminium tape witch I found in a local hardware store . I sealed each piece of tape up within the cavity with soldier. The shield will be connected to the common ground when all the electronics are in the guitar .

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