George's Guitar Emporium

[George]

^ That guitar looks like he won a few bar fights with it.

Or maybe he used it on stage like Keith Richards. This clip has been a long-time favorite over at the Telecaster forum

[George]

I think the blue Squier Stratocaster is done now, minus some final setup details.

Here's a quick picture from this morning with the new neck. It fits just right and feels good.



A couple more pictures and details for guitar nerds are below.

Spoiler:

So this model guitar is what I have ended up assembling, with an aftermarket heavy brass bridge block replacing the smaller and lighter stock one made out of who knows what, only because I already had one.

I was surprised to learn that the Squier Classic Vibe series come with bone nuts. Even better, these slots aren't too high, which throws off intonation at the lower frets even if the saddles are set correctly.

The new neck is in the middle. It's a little darker and it has tan-colored dots on the side of the fingerboard instead of white plastic ones, to resemble the clay dots Fender used in the 1960s on the side and front rosewood fingerboards. I imagine they would be harder to see on a dark stage, but they look cool. I like the wooden truss rod hole surround better than the black plastic one.



The new neck has no skunk stripe. In the 1960s, Fender guitars with one-piece maple necks (and therefore maple fingerboards) had the skunk stripe to fill the hole routed out for the truss rod. Fender put truss rods in from the top on necks that had rosewood fingerboards and glued the fingerboards on afterwards. That's not necessarily how it works anymore, apparently, but this is model is supposed to look like one from the '60s.



So everything was just perfect, right?

Well...not quite.

I noticed the low E string tuning peg had some play in it. It wobbled slightly.

If you look very closely at the bottom of the E string tuner below (on the darker neck), you can see the "box" is rotated just a tiny bit counter-clockwise compared to the other tuners. I think the top of the low E string tuner got hit. Maybe someone with the guitar strapped on turned and something with it. You can see the tuner shaft isn't parallel with the others also.



Looks like it was hit so hard that it actually enlarged the screw hole between tuners.



Time to break out the toothpicks and wood glue again. Sigh...







The tuner "box" is still bent, but now it is firmly mounted to the neck again. It feels solid, like it should, so that tells me the wobble was due to the enlarged screw hole and not because the gear & post inside the box are damaged.

After that, I went outside and polished the frets and fingerboard with 0000 steel wool, so the wood and metal were shiny and new again. I screwed the neck on, installed strings, and then "played them in" by playing it for a while and trying to remember what I used to know how to play. It was still in tune when I came downstairs this morning, which is always a good sign.

The bridge claw is screwed in just tight enough so the bridge doesn't move. I have a whammy bar/talent lever/kickstand but haven't installed it. The rear cover is still off so I can mess around with it when I do an intonation and pickup setup (pickups look really high) and maybe float the bridge a little bit at that time. It has D'addario XL 9-42 strings.

Funny that this all started with a guy I used to jam with giving me a Squier neck and another guy giving me a body he made himself. I don't know what I thought I'd end up with (which is part of the fun with these projects), but a specific Squier guitar that I could buy at a store wasn't it. That's not a complaint, though; I like this guitar a lot and I haven't even plugged it in yet.

[Random]

[MR2 Fan]

[Tom Servo]

That is awfully pretty

[Fiat500]

J. Mascis plays a cardboard Strat (video in link)

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/j-m...rd-strat-shred

[George]

^ Saying a guitar or an amp "sounds like cardboard" used to be quite the insult. I watched the videos at that link when first posted. Cool stuff.

[George]

Yesterday, I posted a long and rambling late-night post but deleted it. Here's a shorter version.

That blue Squier Strat is great. It stays in tune beautifully, and so far that slightly bent low E string tuner is holding tight. I attribute the tuning stability to having the bridge claw tightened just enough (but no more) so the bridge doesn't move, even when bending strings. Once I get my old Telecaster up and running again, I think I'll float the Strat's bridge slightly and then we'll see how good the nut slots are with some dive-bombs and such. If they're not smooth and the right size, the strings will bind and it'll go out of tune. I'll get a pro setup if so. It sounds plenty "Stratty", unlike some even cheaper Squier Strats I've had in the past that just sounded like generic electric guitars but without the "quack" of a Strat.

I used to own a Yamaha RBX260F fretless bass in the '90s and played it on songs such as Pearl Jam's "Alive" in bands, when I bothered to bring two basses. I posted it below just to show the sound of a fretless. I remember "Alive" as a pretty simple four-chord song but I've been away from playing guitar and bass so long that it looks impressive now to watch someone play it. I do remember the cool outro (starting around 5:30), which is just as easy on a fretted bass, but you have to bend the notes instead of sliding them.

Anyway, after staring at this thing on craigslist for the last month or so, and telling myself, "you do NOT need this!", I bought it yesterday. Seller says it's a 1987 model, which is believable. I would have guessed early/mid-'90s, but it doesn't matter.

These are the seller's pictures.









I'll bring you guys along with a photo or two as I adjust the neck and saddles, if anyone's interested. Notice, in the first picture, the spacing of the E and G strings compared to the edges of the fingerboard at the highest "frets". The G string it too close to the edge, which is a very common problem with bolt-on necks. That's a simple neck alignment that only takes a phillips screwdriver to do, and I can see there's enough of a gap between the neck and body to make that quick and easy...or, at least, I hope so.

[Tom Servo]

I saw that post, I enjoyed it

I don't think I could ever do fretless anything. I still have no idea how my mom could play the violin, I have a hard enough time getting my fingers in nearly the right place when frets are involved.

[George]

As I recall, I'd look down for position changes when I had to move my left hand. If playing a simple song that's perhaps G, C, D; I'd look for the G, and then of course be able to feel where the C note was, and glance back down when it was time to move up to D. I'm talking about just root notes on the low strings of a bass as an example. And then little riffs or runs over each chord where you're only reaching up two or three frets sort of fall where they should from muscle memory. And, or course, open strings will be in tune. I don't have the ears and/or constant practice to play an unlined fretless like the guy in the video above, but I think anyone who plays a fretless stringed instrument (or a trombone) on a regular basis just gets used to it, especially when playing with other people so there's other music to play along with.

My daughter plays in the high school band/orchestra. They have at least two upright basses (bass violins) that I've seen at performances. At least one of them has taped lines across the fingerboards, like white medical tape or something, to show where the notes are. They're not even trying to hide it.