The other half of my blog title comes from my longest-running project guitar: the White Strat.
I started this project because I very much wanted a white strat. More specifically, I had always wanted a white SSS strat with a tortoise shell pickguard. I also wanted it to have the Fender shape headstock if possible, and to have a maple neck. And at the same time, I wanted to see how cheaply I could build a decent, playable guitar. So when a cheap strat copy came up in a local Cash Converters, I jumped on it - and the journey began.
The guitar was a Korean Torch from the 80's. Even brand new it would have been a cheap guitar. This thing cost me about $60 after a discount, and was virtually unplayable when I got it. Thankfully though, underneath the worn varnish and grime, it had a decent maple neck, and thanks to some copyright infringement it had a Fender shaped headstock.
I soon set about stripping the guitar down to parts, then down to bare wood. It had a brutally thick layer of lacquer, but a heat gun and orbital sander eventually got it stripped. Unfortunately the body was plywood, but I couldn't be picky for $60.
At this point I made my first major mistake. I figured I could paint the guitar with rattlecans - primer, white coat, and a varnish clear coat to give it a durable surface. Unfortunately for me I didn't use any filler before I began, and plywood is obviously the kind of wood you need to fill before painting. I put on soo many layers of primer, hoping the holes and pores would eventually fill in, before I finally gave up and stripped the body back to bare wood. Having filled the body, I resprayed it and actually got a pretty decent white finish. Unfortunately (again!), I made a bad choice on the varnish top coat and it has worn away fairly quickly. Maybe one day I'll strip the guitar and do it properly, but for now it looks fine unless you are examining it closely. This was my first experience at a paint job that I actually cared about, and I learned a lot of 'what not to do's.
Thankfully I had much better results with the neck. After stripping it bare with sandpaper, I gave it several coats of spray varnish and a light rub with 0000 steel wool. It still has a rough, bare feel to it, but it doesn't collect any grime and it's actually quite fast and slippery. After coating, I levelled and dressed the frets myself (quite easy, but time consuming - I'll detail this in a separate post). the end result is a good looking neck that is very nice and unique to play. The only regret I have is choosing to install an adjustable brass nut, which has been disappointing - it introduces some string buzz when playing open strings.
The electronics are probably the best thing about the White Strat. They took a long time to finalise because I spent a couple of years (off and on) trying to build a DIY sustainer circuit (like a Fernandes Sustainer). I never ended up getting it working to a point I was happy with, so I eventually scrapped the idea. In the end, I installed Alnico 5 single coils with moderate output. They are just generic pickups from China that cost about $10 each, but they sound fantastic - showing that in the end pickups are a coil around a magnet; there's no magic to them.
To improve the on-stage playability, I installed a hum-cancelling coil - the same principle as on the Black Strat, but this time in the pickup cavity. Works a treat; I've played several gigs with this guitar and it is fully quiet on-stage.
As the guitar currently stands, it has been mostly a success. The whole thing has cost me around $200, and the only real flaws it has are the paint job and the nut. The nut is something I can swap out when I get round to it, and the paint job is something I can easily live with.
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