'Hot rodding' my Strat.

Tokai Forum

Help Support Tokai Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Deadman

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 4, 2006
Messages
572
Reaction score
1
Location
England
Just thought I'd share my experience with you all and try and get some input from you al too if that's ok. It's a tired '95 Mex in sunburst.

I've already removed all the lacquer/stain from the neck, added a new decal, polished the frets and given it around 10 coats of cellulose eggshell varnish. I even rolled the fretboard edge and it's all going very well. It definitely has the feel of one of the new US necks now, which is no bad thing.

My next job is to respray the body. I really can't decide between electric orange and a mint green pickguard or vintage white with tortoiseshell. Whaddya think?

I'm going to shield the body (any tips?) and get new pickups (of course). I ordered some aged (cream) knobs and covers from Guitarfetish and they do GFS boutiques which I really like the look/sound of.

Any input would be really appreciated and I plan to have this all done by the end of June, when I'll add some photos of how things went.

Cheers. :)

A photo of how the neck looked:

DSCN0766.jpg
 
Here's a photo of my neck after a bare-wood strip followed by 10 coats of matt single pack cellulose lacquer (just like they used to do it).
I polished the frets and added a new decal which I made on a grahics design computer setup.
I finished off by cutting back the finish starting with 600 grade and finishing at 12000 grade. It feels absolutely gorgeous now:

DSCN0776.jpg


One of the headstock:

DSCN0777.jpg


Over the next few weeks I'll post some photos of the body repaint process and shielding, pickup upgrade etc.
 
Here's what I did today.

Let me start by saying, I couldn't believe how much base and lacquer was on this thing! Firstly, dichloromethane chemical paint stripper. Didn't even touch it!

DSCN0784.jpg


I ended up using a plastic media blast cabinet to get rid of the majority of the lacquer, being carefull not to damage the veneer underneath. At this point, I was very tempted to do a relic job, but decided against it in the end.

DSCN0785.jpg


This is how it is for now. I ended up using an orbital sander at a lowly 30psi, being very careful not to 're-shape' the body. Finally I hand rubbed using 280 grade then 600. I smoothed off the cavities too to enable my shielding to go smoothly (I hope!).

Next up will be painting. I think I'll go the old fashioned way and seal it with nitro-cellulose lacquer or shellac, followed by nitro colour (cream is looking more and more likely).

I reckon the body will resonate a lot better now as there was just SO MUCH poly on this thing it was unreal. For those MIM owners who are wondering, this is a six-piece body.

DSCN0788.jpg
 
I just ordered some GFS premium texas boutiques, vintage pickguard and my paint:

Ford electric orange. It's an strong orange basecoat, followed by an orange pearl coat and lacquer. Copied straight off the new 2006 Ford Focus ST, check out this colour!:

http://www.parkers.co.uk/choosing/carreviews/gallery/?img=2&model_id=1441&category=Driving/moving%20exterior

Should look awesome on my hot rod Strat.
 
Ok.
This is probably completely the wrong site to be posting all this crap.
I promise not to post any more until it's finished.
 
:D You know, I'd never think of doing a strat in that colour but I am really interested to see what it looks like when finished.

Keep the updates coming too. We read them but I don't know anything about what your doing, so I'd rather stay quiet than make a fool of myself :wink:
 
Cheers Ste. It's my first attempt at 'hot-rodding' and I'm no expert either!
I promise I'll keep the thread updated.

Sneaky. You are a cheeky chappy. Hmmm?? :roll: :wink:
 
cheeky eh...my mom is British so I`ve heard that before. Just trying to keep things light after the heavy stuff thats been happening recently. I don`t take the internet as seriously as many evidently do.
No rolling eyes to add.
 
Deadman said:
Ok.
This is probably completely the wrong site to be posting all this crap.
I promise not to post any more until it's finished.
Maybe you should also start a similar in the new Strat forum by the same admin who maintains the Telecaster forum:

http://www.strat-talk.com/
 
I promise not to post any more until it's finished.

Nah !! keep the info coming - this type of information is useful no matter what guitar it's on.

(I'll confess to having more than a passing interest as I'm just taking some tentative steps in the realms of project guitars).

The colour should be awesome - I have a friend with a focus st in that very colour - he calls it the peach beast. It's very 8)
 
Keep em coming. Its in the 'Guitar' section anyways so is in the right place in my opinion.
 
Thanks for your comments guys.
Paint arrived today. Base coat is BRIGHT orange. Pearl coat looks good enough to drink.

(Your friend is a lucky bloke Bruce!!)

Oh. I changed my order on the pups. I'm getting a set of GFS premium overwound alnico boutiques. 9.0k neck, 9.4k middle and 10k bridge.

The painting won't be a problem.

However I'm crapping myself over the thought of installing those gorgeous pups. :)
 
hans-j?rgen said:
Deadman said:
Ok.
This is probably completely the wrong site to be posting all this crap.
I promise not to post any more until it's finished.
Maybe you should also start a similar in the new Strat forum by the same admin who maintains the Telecaster forum:

http://www.strat-talk.com/

Cool site Hans. I may just do that. Thanks for the link bud.
 
Cheers oo.

I just uploaded another photo to my album. It's my Strat in it's original form before I started. Apologies for posting things out of order.

DSCN0684.jpg
 
Deadman this thread inspired me to hot rod a strat of my own !!

I have a foolproof plan that can only succeed. The strat I'll be hot-rodding is a Squire Affinity I picked up in Cash Converters for 50 quid.

Now admittidly, that's not going to be a hard instrument to improve - but therin lies the challenge - can a OKish cheapo guitar be turned into something better without spending a fortune. I'll document the process on my site and post a link once there's something worth looking at.

Looking forward to a progress update on your orange screamer soon :D
 
Brilliant. I just love the thought of owning a guitar that cost pennies but plays like pounds Bruce.

There's an article on doing the very same thing (AND to a Squier Strat) this month in one of the UK guitar mags.

Painting on the 'Orange Screamer' :D will start on Tuesday evening btw.
 
I've updated my website (it's still quite rough _ive not tested it lower than my big screen so far, so stuff might need scaling down !!!) it now includes the project strat and it's now uploaded. I'll be adding some other guitar and tokai stuff later !!! (famous last words - the last update was 2 years ago !!!)

www.hanger18.org
 
Looking forward to an update there Bruce.

Anyway. The body is painted. The following photos are:

1. Primer
2. Orange undercoat
3. Electric pearl orange basecoat
4. Above with lacquer
5. Close up of the colour

DSCN0839.jpg


DSCN0840.jpg


DSCN0842.jpg


DSCN0843.jpg


DSCN0844.jpg


Next up; shielding (after polishing the lacquer).

I'm twitching a little about my pickups from Guitar Fetish though. It's been 10 days and they're not replying to my emails.
 
Back
Top