My strat build is basically almost finished. I will do a separate NGD post on it when it’s fully complete and I have had time to take some professional quality photos. But here are some photos and description of the last part of the build after drilling holes for the neck and tremolo block.
What I did after that was:
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Shield the cavities with copper foil to prevent interference and reduce hum from external interference sources. This seems to have been quite successful. It seems very well shielded. Some people say it’s not necessary to do this but since I have noise on my telecaster after a pickup change (it’s not well shielded at all), I decided not to take any chances with this one and the copper foil is very cheap at Thomman in Germany. Photo below.
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Installed the tuners on the neck. These are Schaller non-locking. This step went very smoothly. Photo below.
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Installed a neck plate with a serial number. The serial number is also written inside the guitar pocket. Photo below.
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Couldn’t install the jack plate that I bought. It was too small and had to order a real Fender one (double the price, but fits!)
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Installed string trees. I put 2 on this one on strings 5 & 6 but also 3 & 4. I did this on my tele and it has great tuning stability, so I did it on the strat, even if it wasn’t needed.
It’s not complete which is why I haven’t posted a NGD post with proper professional quality pictures. But it’s now set up and plays really great and sounds lovely. I really couldn’t believe it when i plugged it in for the first time. I spent a lot of time levelling the frets and so I was able to get the action very low so it’s easy to play. Also after a couple of days (probably needed it for the neck to start settling in and the tremolo springs to stretch a bit) the tuning stability is very good. I heard bad things about strat tuning stability but mine seems pretty solid after 2 days.
Things still to do:
- Screw down the pick guard
- screw on the matching back plate (matches the pick guard)
- install tremolo arm.
My wife got me a matching strap which is beautiful. (photo)
I also want to say a huge thanks to all the people who answered my questions and posted advice on this thread or my separate strat build-related posts. It’s a fantastic community we have and everyone was so helpful. Those who advised were:
@TheCluelessLuthier @RobDickinson @DeltaTyne @CATMAN62 @Ontime @DarrellW @sequences
@Lefteris @Wishbone71
Thanks, Ian
