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This has been a rather slow process, I must admit. When I first bought the guitar, I didn’t have the money to buy the new pick-up I wanted, so I just put off getting to work with everything else as well. But good things do come to those who wait!

When I finally stared working, the first thing I did was to take the body out into street, and kicking it around for a bit. There was a lot of sand and small gravel on the ground which ensured rough look as a result.
This is what the body looked like after that treatment:

The next step was to set the whole thing on fire. I found an empty parking lot, brought a bottle of gasoline and a box of matches, and got to work. I didn’t get any images of the first session, but this is what it resulted in:

I wasn’t quite happy with the result, so I decided to try again with the old pick guard on, so as to spare the pick-up cavity from the flames. Before I got the chance to do that though, my mother suggested I’d try using a hot air gun to get some of the lacquer off. I gave it a try, and ended up very happy with the result! The lacquer came off very nicely, and I was able to control exactly which parts should be clean and which shouldn’t.
When I felt done with the hot air gun, I decided to set fire to it once again, to perhaps get a more scorched look. This time I even managed to get it on camera:

This is the final result:

As for the neck, all I’ve basically done is sanding of the lacquer, from the back of the neck, and from the headstock (getting rid of the old logo), as well as drilling holes for the new tuners. I didn’t get any good pictures in between, but here is the end result:

On a final note, I’ve decided to go for the pick-ups that I talked about in my last post, but I’ve come up with some changes to the wiring. More on that next time.

/K

So a while back I bought a guitar from a friend. I didn’t think I needed it, but he really wanted to sell it, and he gave me a good price (a very good price), so I bought it. And so I started thinking what I could do with it. It wasn’t a very good guitar, and the set up was horrible, so I realized I was going to have to do some major work to get it good. At the very least replace the pick-ups, and possibly even the neck. The tuners were not in very good shape either, and since I don’t like playing with a tremolo bar, I figured I was at least going to have to block the bridge, if not replace it with a hard tail. As I was thinking about all of this, and beginning to take the poor old instrument apart, I came to the conclusion that I might as well go all out, and turn this baby into a monster. Use this guitar as the skeleton on which to try everything I’ve ever wanted to try when building a guitar, and turning it into the most versatile instrument ever, or thereabout (short of the Jimmy Page signature, perhaps).

So what’s the plan, then? Let me break it down for you:

The body:
This I’m keeping, but some major work will be done to it. This is what it looks like now:

As you can see, it’s an alder body, with a standard strat-type three color sunburst, and universal pick-up routing. My plan is to relic the body, by kicking it around on the ground for a bit, and then setting it on fire. Hopefully this will produce a look similar to the famous strat, now owned by Dweezil Zappa, that Jimi Hendrix once torched on stage. This might not work, though, since there’s a good chance the lacquer isn’t of the same quality, and will melt rather than burn. We’ll see what happens.
I’ll also install flush mount Strap Lok strap holders, since I like the look of those a lot.

The neck:
I’ll do what I can to save this, but it looks like the weak spot of the guitar. This is what it looks like:

It’s a maple neck, with a 22-fret rosewood fretboard, and a headstock just slightly smaller than on a modern strat. What I’ll do is first of all to sand of the lacquer from the back of the neck, to give it a nicer feel. The profile is pretty much to my taste though (not too fat), so I won’t mess around with that. Besides that, I’ll go over the frets, and exchange the nut, and see if I can make it work. If I can, I’ll get a friend (or possibly my sister) to paint a custom artwork on the headstock, to make the guitar stand out even more.

The hardware:
Not much to say about this. I’ll keep everything except the machine heads, which, quite frankly, are crap. I’ll probably replace them with black ones, but that’s not set in stone.

The electronics:
This is where the fun really starts! Take a look at the “before” picture:

What we have on here is three run-of-the-mill crappy strat type single coils, wired to a master volume, two tones, and a 5-way switch. This will not do. This will not do at all!
I’m going for as much tonal variety as possible, so what I’m thinking right now is as follows: A humbucker in the bridge position, preferably a rather hot one, that can be split into single coil mode. A slightly hot strat-type single coil in the middle, and another humbucker in the neck position (not as hot as the bridge one), which should also be splitable. I’m then going to wire them up to three push/pull pots (still one volume and two tone), and a regular 5-way switch. One pot will split the bridge pick-up, another the neck pick-up, and the third will make it so that position three on the switch will be bridge and neck in parallel, as opposed to middle pick-up alone, when the pot is pushed. This will give me a total of 12 different pick-up settings, basically (yeah, but not quite) combining a strat, a tele, and an LP. To top it off, I’ll install a kill switch, so that I can get the classic LP “hacked up” sound, that is normally produced by having one pick-up turned down, and flicking the 3-way switch back and forth.
Right now I’m leaning towards a Seymour-Duncan set up, with an SH-4 JB in the bridge position, an SH-2n Jazz in the neck position, and an SSL-4 in the middle. It seems like a pretty good, medium hot to hot set up, with a lot of potential.

That’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted as the work progresses.

/K

Last Saturday was the first day of songwriting for my new metal collaboration. I’m writing together with my long time friend, drummer Emil Brandqvist, who also plays the drums in KWB. We met early at his place, and drew some sketches for songs. We’re still far from anything finished, but there’s some heavy ass riffs in there, believe me.
Before leaving Emil’s place, I also came up with a new idea for a book, from watching Emil play with his son. More on that later.

After leaving Emil and his family, I headed for Fuzz Guitar Show, where I had planed to pick up parts to build a new bas for myself. I met up with my good friend Martin Olsson, who is an expert on everything bass, and he helped me pick out just what I needed. I got a beautiful Candy Apple Metallic J-style body, and a nice sounding neck, plus most of the hardware.
I have since spent my spare time trying to put it all together. It’s not completely finished yet – the pickups are on their way from Germany – but it’s coming together quite nicely.