I bought a cheap Mex Standard Strat and modded it from the ground up.
It has all new hardware, all the pansy stuff like pick guards back plate screws neck screws and plate lol
The main stuff is :
Sperzel tuners, non locking.
An earvana nut that helps to sort out the intonation between the 1st and 6th frets. The intonation is set with a peterson strobe and reads + or - 1 to 2 cents on all the lower frets and 0 at the 12th
On my ibanez I can normally set the intonation at 0 on the 24th but strats are a pain but it feels and sounds great.Graphtech string tree, string saddles and strap holders. The tree and saddles really help the tone.
Electronics wise it's a bit of a tone monster. I put Kent Armstrong specials on the neck and middle (Texas wound style) and a Kent Armstrong Hot Rail Mini Humbucker at the bridge.
The small switch is an on/on/on for the humbucker which goes from series to Coil cut (to split the humbucker to a single coil) to Parallel wiring.
There's the obligatory killswitch for muting or funky staccato sounds.
The main feature of it is the concentric pots. Each pot is wired per pick up so I have an individual Volume and tone for each pick up. The volumes on the top pot and the tone on the bottom. Each pot has a center dent so you can set the volume to the middle and each pickup will react the same.
Inside you'll see the whole of the body is shielded including the pickguard. The wire from the tremolo is grounded to the body shielding. All the grounds from the electrics are "star ground" to a floating ring connector and shielded with electrical tape. This is connected to one of the volume pots with a big ring connector so it is screwed on and then to a sprague .33 cap.
All the volume controls have a .001 orange drop caps for the treble bleed mod (so you don't loose treble when you turn the volume down) and the tones have the obligatory .47 sprague cap. The pots are all 500k.
I have a set of regular Ernie ball .10's on it and it's tuned to Eb. I normally prefer sets with a wound G but hard to get hold of in a pinch.
All in all it cost about £280 for the guitar and then another £500 for the parts lol
Shout out to www.wdmusic.co.uk (if that's allowed) for helping me with my numerous questions and selections over the past couple of months
I'm looking to post some samples up tomorrow but so far I've spent too much time finishing the set up and playing it!
