GUITAR BOARD

Some progress has been made.

Images 25 through 32 in the gallery are new. Images show the bridge
installed, the Callaham replacement bridge block installed, the new
cream pearl pickguard from Warmoth and the metal pickguard shield from
Callaham.

with this 0.014 thick aluminum shield, I can tighten down the volume
and tone pots and they will be grounded to one another. This results in
no need for ground straps to be soldered from pot to pot. I wired all
of the pickup ground wires, the input ground and the bridge ground all
together to one spot which is also screwed through the copper lining to
ground everything together. The volume pot has cap and resistor
soldered so that the tone doesnt roll off when you lower the volume.
There is also a jumper soldered to the two middle terminals of the 5-way
so that when the switch is all the way to bridge only position, the
middle tone pot controls the tone of the bridge pickup. These are the
only mods from standard Fender Strat wiring. Nothing fancy. No kill
switch, no push-pull pots. Pretty much straight vintage style strat wiring.

I received the pickups today. I went with the Lindy Fralin Blues
Specials. I tried to wire everything as neatly as possible.

A couple more things. I didnt like the look of those huge 15mm
diameter tuning machine washers on the headstock as seen in images 21
and 22. So I picked up some small, thin, Stainless washers and machined
the ID to 8mm and the OD to 12.5mm. They are just large enough to do
the job and have a much more vintage look to them. They are installed in
image 30. Another thing about Strats that bothers me is that Fender
screws a strap button with a flat base onto the curved surface of the
horn. I dont care for that condition as that strap button on our two
current strat style bodies comes loose if you dont tighten it to the
point of deforming the wood. So I took a piece of milk white colored
nylon and machined a little bushing to act as an interface between the
button and the body. This replaces the felt washer and can be tightened
as much as one wants without deforming the wood and it should not wiggle
loose.

I was a little miffed at myself this evening because I finished up the
assembly and only then discovered that I had no sets of strings in the
house! Well... I managed to pull together an almost complete set. It is
currently strung with no high e string. The G and the B are both the
same gauge. Ill be running out for new strings as soon as the shop
opens tomorrow.

Recordings to come after a few days of adjusting the trem springs,
action, intonation etc. The nut is a bit high. That will be corrected
when I receive the nut files that were so generously donated to me by a
fellow NG poster.

Enjoy the images:

http://www.brickgarage.com/pictures/Strat Project

Peace

DV

PS. I was going to include an image of the little tool that I made for
drilling the pilot holes in the body for the pickguard but I LOST IT!
Its a great little tool that guarantees that all the holes will be
exactly centered beneath the pickguard holes. Its not easy to describe
without images but let me know if you want me to try to describe it.

Dave Van wrote in message
news:w% 6k.6154$N87.4241@nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com...

I did. Nice job, and nice engineering!

Steve
(who lervs his vernier caliper too....)
--
http://www.fivetrees.com