So I had finally gotten all my parts I needed to put
this build together. It's nothing over the top, but should be a nice combination:
- Body: MIM Standard Stratocaster Plus Top - Flame Maple in Tobacco Sunburst
- Neck: MIM Kenny Wayne Shepherd Model
- Pickups: US Fat 50's that come out of my Mystic Blue US Body.
What I would end up with, visually at least, is basically what is depicted on the fender site:
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| Plus Top Standard Stratocaster |
With the difference naturally being the pickups (+ they're 'parchment' or whatever this 'off-white' color is called nowadays), and the neck. So let's get building:
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| All the parts ready to go |
I had to order the bridge, jackplate etc separate so the first step was to install the bridge.
For a couple of days I toyed with the idea of going with KWS bridge, but I settled on a standard MIM for now.
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| Bridge Installed |
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| Test fit of the springs |
After the bridge I figured it was a good time to put some new leads on to the pickguard electronics, since I had cut them out of the USA Body (
which received a Dimarzio Pickguard) . Now my first mistake was using the wrong soldering iron. I was using a tiny 15 watt , and that barely got anything moving. I switched to my 30 watt and that worked SO much better!
I noticed that the screw in the middle of the cavity that nowadays holds an extra ground wire was missing too, so I put a new one in and tied a ground wire to it . Also fed a ground wire to the back Tremolo cavity and of course the signal + ground wire to the Jack Plate hole.
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| Just using some paper towels to protect the body before soldering |
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| Jack Plug attached |
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| Ground wire attached and springs installed |
Now an issue I ran into was that I did not have any correct screws to mount the pickguard. Since I did not feel like ordering them and then waiting another week or so, I found some screws locally that would fit. They are not 'oval head' like the normal pickguard screws, but I don't mind them. I can always swap them out once I do get some 'official' screws. But for now - these guys would have to do.
Having soldered everything up and all screws put in, gave me this beautiful looking finished body.
Next was to simply bolt on the neck. I had noticed in transportation the neck tuning pegs had gotten a little loose, but simply tightening the screws a bit solved that. So 4 neck screws later I had a beautiful guitar, ready to be played (well.. once i put some strings on it..)
