What better way to get everything you want on a guitar than to build it to your own spec!?

The customer brought this one with instruction to “make it mint” and high hopes for a quality sounding and feeling Strat.

The neck pocket needed to be resized and reshaped a little to fit, as did the scratchplate. The old holes in the back of the neck were just out of place – meaning they had to be filled and redrilled to get the neck angle spot on and a nice tight bite on each screw.

A set of Wilkinson pickups were wired up to a pre-wired loom, which made this bit a doddle. While on with the wiring, I noticed that the cavity shielding wasn’t connected to the underside of the scratchplate shielding anywhere (you should leave a tab of shielding hanging over the edge so it gets trapped between the body and the plate to ensure good electrical continuity between the two) I installed this right next to a screw for best contact security.

The neck felt a little ‘budget’ to me, so I rolled the edges of the fretboard off a little and rounded the fret ends. There were some uneven frets, mainly at the top of the board, so a full level, crown & polish followed by a thorough oiling had the neck feeling great in the hand. I then fitted a roller string tree to top the neck off before moving on to attach it to the body and give it a full setup.

I’m very pleased with the outcome of this and the customer is now aiming for all of his guitars to “play like that thing”. Magic 👌