Fender Stratocasters: what they were and rebuilding what's out there now

John Watt

Member
This might be the most incredible co-incidence in my entire life, unless you count mutual orgasms.
You have seen how my guitar playing evolved as having the bass strings on the bottom with the highs on top,
what basically is having a right-handed neck on a left-handed body.
That was Mr. George Benson convincing me that playing my right-handed Stratocaster upside-down worked.
He said the pads of my fingers were there to push down the bass E string, when I get into jazz playing,
and were also there to dampen the lower strings when the guitar was active with feedback.
He said I didn't have to scrunch up my fingers to play lead on the higher strings,
and was pulling the strings down to bend them or stretch them in a way you can't when strung as usual.
So I wanted to put a right-handed neck on my mail order left-handed guitar.

I had a neck left over from an older conversion, using offshore guitars.
I measured it, I held it to the mail order neck, and it looked the same.
I put it in the body and used a screw for the hole in the corner of the bottom left,
and it went in. I got a piece of wire and pushed it into the other holes,
and it went it all the way, and so did the screws. I started giggling out loud.
I screwed the neck on tight enough to hold it, wanting to keep the holes as fresh as possible,
for the final tightening, and used a piece of ordinary string to see if it was aligned,
and it couldn't be any better. This wasn't the only wonderful thing about it.
This right-handed neck has one more fret on it... yes... more notes... amazing.

These two photos show how the neck looks from the front and back.
If I can remember, this neck came from a guitar made in Malaysia.


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John Watt

Member
Here are some new photos to show work on a second left-handed tremolo unit.
The photos in Slavis' Machine Shop show how Slavi cut down a right-handed tremolo block,
to make it the same depth as the original Fender.
These blocks are made half-way to be both right or left-handed, before you finish machining them.
All I have to do is drill the string inputs on the lefty side and it will be ready.

The other photos show my 1972 Fender Stratocaster tremolo plate and block,
with the Fender plate and machined Fender block, with the mail-order Strat unit.
You can see the rough grinding of the offshore Strat and see how bad the angle is.
It's not below the six screw holes, but half-way across, making it a bad pivot point.
I'll have to get out my grinding tool and work on that, not caring about losing some chrome.
I want it to feel as if it's floating as easily as possible, and can be adjusted to do that.
When I'm going for half-tones, quarter tones, cascading ascending and descending micro-tones,
I want to feel natural about it, even it it's an aspect of my playing that is dependent on technology,
not my fretting fingers. May the phase be with me.

In case you're wondering about the 1972 Fender block and how it got chopped,
and tack-welded back on, yes, it gets rough under that surface plate,
a tone war that never stops... evolving from one build into a semi-solid-body.
I can dream. Maybe one day I won't just be toned and tuned,
I'll be toned, tuned and tanned in a truly touching kind of way.


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John Watt

Member
It's been nice, thinking about using a Haida theme for my semi-solid-body.
If I have one instrument, and I do, it has to be natural wood, that's for sure.
I got away from my original violin style look, curving the edges, losing the top and side ridges,
so I had to paint it. I was going to paint Haida symbols, black, red and white, around the sides.
I priced some industrial stickers where a computer scanned them and printed them out in a row.
Instead of painting for over a month for the detail and accuracy Haida artwork demands,
I could have stuck them on in under a half hour. But I'm not doing that.
Here's my Haida thoughts of today, what my life is, what I want my guitar to be.

When I was making signs from a shop in Port Colborne, I got a gig with Fabricland.
I made a 19 and a 1/2 foot by 5 foot rooftop illuminated sign.
Here in Welland, the biggest piece of sign plastic was four feet tall, usually, as big as it gets.
But the company in Toronto that buys Lexan from the United States to distribute it in Ontario,
gave me a nice account, a personal account, because they got off on my ability to work with it.
Instead of a sheet of quarter inch standard sign plastic, I got an 1/8 inch sheet custom cut,
right off the railroad car roll, twice, for two signs, five feet wide and nineteen and a half feet long.
This was a huge sign, but with materials half the thickness it was lighter than a smaller sign could be.
Total cost to Fabricland, $3,500 for each sign, for Welland and Cambridge, a total of $7,000.
You can see I like rounding numbers out for when I do my income tax.

Fabricland phoned and asked me if I would come to Toronto to get paid, so I said yes right away.
I knew I could grab a musician friend and trip around downtown Toronto, scoping out music stores.
Fabricland divided Ontario into four quarters, and offered me a quarter if I became a sign-maker for them.
That came with a big shop and employees, and they said they had two new stores ready to go.
I said no. I said if I was playing guitar in a band I wouldn't have got into such big signs,
and this was enough big work and big money to get me back on the road again, starting a new wave band.
yeah... a jazzy and classical influenced jammy new wave band. My new drummer just came from a country Juno Award win,
and he wanted me to break him into the rock music business.

I said that Fabricland doesn't have any original Canadian native artwork for fabric patterns, being a shopper myself,
and that Haida artwork was my favorite.
A couple of weeks later they phoned again and said they contracted a Haida artist in B.C. to make a new design.
I bought some as soon as it came in.
When you see this big, the verticals don't look straight even though they are, another Haida optical illusion.
When you see Haida artwork, usually the red and black on a white background,
if you concentrate on a pair of eyes or shapes, your stereo vision makes an optical illusion,
what could look like the wingtips or arms reaching out around you, a really amazing effect.
I had a four foot wide shelf I made with a big curved piece of clear plastic forming a half-circle dome.
I placed this fabric behind that with a soft back light, and I'd sit in the dark and stare at it,
always inspiring some creative thoughts, or a peace beyond my understanding.
When a Mohawk friend came over and saw a couple of my Haida artwork copies, really big,
he said he saw the spirit of the Haida, a wonder-full compliment.
I said it was just a lot of hard work and using a sign projector to get all the lines down perfectly.

When I play my first semi-solid-body, my dream of making it out to B.C. and spending time in a Haida village,
sitting in a long house, sensing the spirit... partaking in what they have resisted against foreign military intrusion...
yes... Russians came ashore, followed by the British and then the Americans... but they only found a rocky shore...
and Canada shows up to take the measure of that shore... but no-one tries to go inland any more.

Captain Cook was the first European to sail up the east coast of North America, looking for a Northern Passage.
When he first met Haida, they came out in ocean canoes and paddled quickly around his boat, singing for an hour.
When he waved them aboard they climbed all over the boat, singing for another hour.
Captain Cook said it was the most amazing thing he ever heard, better than European choirs or operas.
He said he couldn't imagine what it took to make men sing like that, so high and so low, so expressive.
When he came ashore for a meeting, they took him to an ocean-side building on stilts that held over 600 people.
They moved boards from the ceiling and walls for more ventilation.
He was amazed to see Haida in costumes and masks acting out their meeting, as a way of welcoming him.
The Haida might have not survived European intervention, their ocean lined with a kelp bed full of sea otters,
except for one fact.
When Captain Cook was on his way back, returning to Hawaii, those natives killed him and most of his crew,
for the diseases and devastation their weapons brought to them. At that time, the Haida were lost to European history.
They still are.
When Jimi Hendrix visited British Columbia, playing in Vancouver, he met with some Haida elders.
The Haida are famous for their oral histories, describing the ice age and the great world flood Noah described.
Jimi used some of their words as lyrics... "the echoes of glaciers from long ago".
There are going to be a lot of echoes in my semi-solid-body, and a few ghosts too,
with a resonance of our new millennium blues... cancer blues...
When I'm on a long distance bike-hike, seeing those striations leading into Lake Erie...
those echoes of glaciers from long ago...

Toking is now legal this month in Ontario, sold by the province. I'm going for a totem.



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John Watt

Member
AlderonFrederic! It's been a bad time for me offline, why I spent so much time typing away here.
I've been looking at you, seeing you as a new member, and considering where you seem to be at,
what you say and show, getting a compliment from you is very meaningful.

If everything I have to do downtown goes well today, I should be back early with enough left-over energy,
to work on my guitar, take some new photos, and spend some time here tonight.
See you later.

I'm back again. I should have looked at your video link first, about building a homemade guitar.
I have one piece of crucial advice.
If you're building a solid-body guitar, before you do anything to the block of wood for the body,
screw your neck on first.
That way your neck is screwed on as best as it can be screwed on.
After that, carve the body so your neck sits at the level you want it to be.
If you try to carve out your body first and then try to drill it for the neck,
it's very difficult to make it that perfect.
And after the neck is in place, you can position the bridge exactly where you want it.
Screwing your neck in as tight as possible and aligning your bridge is the core of your guitar,
for both the acoustic quality and string action.
When you have that together,
drawing your body shape around them will let you position it where you want it to be.

When I put together a neck and body this way, carving the body out around the shape of the neck,
I can make it so tight the neck squeezes in and holding just the neck, pick up the body and wave it around.
The more tension you have between the neck and body gives you more acoustic resonance.
And with a solid-body guitar, any acoustic quality is a big one.
If you are trying to build a guitar for the first time, I recommend buying a used guitar for parts.
If something you're doing doesn't work out, you can always use what you have.
And a used neck is settled down, knowing what you have. A new one is always taking a chance.

As far as more acoustic resonance goes,
use your first four screws to hold the neck in place without the back plate on.
Drill four new holes closer to the neck and screw the neck on first with those,
and then put the plate on with those four screws.
This duality of tension allows more harmonic flow along the neck to the body,
and it is a greater tension, again, creating a more acoustic quality.
Just as good, if you're trapped by record executives or other musicians who are messing with you,
you can use your guitar as a weapon to pound your way out without breaking off the neck.
And if someone was bent over, moon-walking up to me onstage, he'd also be seeing stars.
It's nice to be confident about your guitar.
 
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John Watt

Member
I just took a photo to show a bass player in Fort Erie where I am with my guitars.
He wants to start an original band and I'm being very serious with him.
Here it is, no big deal, but it is the first time I've had all four guitars together.
Please, if you're left-handed you might want to get some Kleenex out,
before you look at them big.
Inventive semi-solid-bodies featuring hardware going back to 1964,
with a used off-shore $90 Strat-style and a $149.95 mail-order Strat clone kit.
It's enough to make me cry... when I think of my life and what I went through,
that brought me down to this... unfinished, un-played...
with a plug that's been dangling... uh... far too long...



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John Watt

Member
These are photos of my first semi-solid-body guitar, over six or seven years old.
It looks good in these photos, but in real life I wasn't happy with the imperfections.
I took it apart to refinish it, and the criminal activity against me made me homeless a few times.
That's why I bought a small acoustic, so I could keep playing and singing, and writing songs,
eventually getting the cherry Strat and portable amp so I could get around while I'm making sounds.

This guitar is sanded down, half-way painted up, as I'm starting to work on it again.
This truly is a more than an 80% addition of features to a Fender Stratocaster.
The only thing Fender about it is the shape of the body and the use of a Stratocaster tremolo unit.
If you have an electric guitar with a bolt-on neck I encourage you to try and build this new template.
It's one thing to hype up the rock stars of the past, seeing too much of that everywhere I look,
even if it's nice to have those images and sounds as your rock music past.
Being able to think you have a symphonic-electric guitar and connect with the symphony masters of their past,
can only open you up to a deeper musical world of music and performers.
And guess what is an amazing benefit? You really get to be royalty free.
Hey! Take a look! This sheet music's on me! Oh... you're looking how to play it on YouTube...
We are all now living through this strange device.
Let's let rock and symphonies get together to make it exceptionally nice.


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