In response to Mr. Mexican Stratocaster I’ll give a little synopsis of how “The Buick” strat came to be. It started when I bought the Son Unit a Mexican Strat on ebay. The neck felt just a tiny bit wider than my jap strat’s, and I liked it, so I thought I’d assemble a stat with a wider neck width. I guessed what I wanted was 1 11/16 width, but I think that’s even wider than the Son Unit’s Mexican strat. Fortunately, I the wider width. The
neck radius is 10. I wanted to try a compound radius from Warmoth but couldn’t justify the cost.
Almost all the parts came from either eBay or Guitarfetish (the latter of which I like a lot.)
The breakdown was like this, as I recall.
From Ebay
Fender USA body, nitrocellulose
Musickraft neck
Sperzel staggered locking tuners
Buick decal
From Guitarfetish
pickup and guard assembly
Wilkinson trem and bridge
From elsewhere, probably Stewart-McDonald
neck plate
graphite nut
from guitar reranch, vintage amber lacquer for the neck
Random details. I really wanted it to stay in tune even with the vibrato, so I went with a graphite nut and the Sperzel staggered locking tuners. It worked out well. Since the the Sperzels are staggered height, I don’t need string trees and there’s no binding in the nut. Some claim they still need string trees, not me.
The neck is interesting because instead of binding, the dark stripe along the side is actually a layer of ebony sandwiched between the maple. One of the pics shows the neck pre-vintage coat. The neck came with only shellac and the finish didn’t feel real slick. Once the vintage coat went on I used micro paper to gloss it up, just for the feel.
The Wilkinson trem block is nice and heavy. I’d previously tried buying a cheap assembled body off ebay, and it was awful. The trem block was light and thin and the body was just crap, with an unusably giant neck pocket.
So really, all I did was choose the components and solder the jack to the pickguard assembly. Since I wanted it set up perfectly, I had Maple Street guitars here in Atlanta bolt the neck on and do the set up. They let me watch, so now I feel confident enough to try that myself, though I’m certainly not prepared to build my own nut. I know that because I tried and failed.
Even though the pickups and pickguard assembly are not the top of the line from Guitarfetish, it still sounds great with very little hum beyond the usual hum that’s typical for strats at certain switch settings. One day I might upgrade to their higher end guitarfetish noiseless pickups.
In short, it plays and sounds perfect to me. Of course, the Son Unit now prefers it to his own, so he’ll have it one day. I wrote him a note in the neck pocket. Oh, it’s called “The Buick” because the tortoise shell pickguard made him think it looked “old, like a Buick.”
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