Fred Leo

I can’t believe Ive slipped into the guitar rabbit hole, but I have, and it echoes down here. It started simply enough when I bought a mexi strat for my son and found that I preferred the wider 1-11/16th nut width. The idea was to buy a neck and a body and make my own cheap one. Yeah. The body and attached hardware I bought off eBay was damaged in shipping, and its replacement, well, sucked. The neck pocket was looser than Charlie Rangel’s tax worksheet, and whoever screwed on the parts apparently did so while drunk in a dark closet. So I bought a USA body, and then the bridge from the original body didn’t fit, and by now I was suspect of the whole pickguard/pickup assembly. The Musickraft neck fits great on the new body though.

So in search of a new bridge and pickguard/pickup assembly I ran across what I think might be a neat little company I’m tentatively excited about. They sell all kinds of guitar parts and some guitars made overseas. Now overseas stuff can vary wildly, but something about these folks convinced me they know what they’re doing. For one thing, their descriptions and specs of all their gear are relevant and straight-up. For another, the review of their guitars at unrelated and objective sites are astoundingly good considering the price point. In fact, they are so good I’m fascinated in this little operation not just from a musician’s point of view but from a business/marketing standpoint. In short, I had the distinct impression that the business is run by a musician and a businessman of some considerable knowledge, probably hard-earned. Based soley on this impresion and some reviews I read, I bought one of their guitars.

Yes, site unseen, guitar unplayed — and this from someone who still remembers the disappointment of the “Black Widow” (see earlier post.) But these are different times from the days of the Black Widow. There are easily accessible credible reviews and youtube vids, blogs etc. I felt confident and curious enough to order the guitar. That’s all I have on that for now, but in the meantime, the whole strat exercise is a good thing. I’ll learn how to make my own string nut and do some soldering and refresh and expand on what knowledge I have of set ups.

But just to give you an idea of how far down the rabbit hole you can go in guitar-mod world, enjoy this. I haven’t been in such an amorphous mental netherworld since evaluating mic pres.