New Strat Build Clip (and build story)

[Jedi McFly]

When it comes to Strats I've been a partscaster guy, and they've always been Super Strats with HSS or HSH setups and locking trems. I've had the itch for a more traditional Strat for a few years, and its finally come to fruition.

The body is a Fender Deluxe Roadhouse body from the Stratosphere. I picked this for it's contoured heel, two point trem with vintage style saddles, and most importantly to my wife, the Ice Blue Metallic color. It's paired with a Roasted Maple/Rosewood Warmoth neck with my usual specs: 1-5/8" nut width, Wolfgang backshape, compound radius and jumbo stainless frets. A graphtech nut and Gotoh tuners with pearloid buttons adorn the headstock.

For the electronics I took some inspiration from the Silver Sky, most specifically the mid-6k wound pickups and a 275k pot volume pot. I read some great reviews of the Fender Custom Shop Fat '60s over on Strat-Talk.com, so I took a chance on those (and had a set of Texas Specials just in case I didn't like the Fat '60s). Since they're wound at 6.7k with Alnico 2 magnets I figured they may benefit from a hair more brightness with a 275k pot, so I got a bourns low friction 300k pot and used a resistor in parallel to ground to bring it down to 275k. This made the pickups really well balanced - they're nice and fat with a present yet pleasant high end that makes them very versatile.

As I said before, I'm usually a Super Strat (or Wolfgang) guy. Part of that is that I absolutely cannot stand traditional Strat volume knob placement. So I went with a modified master volume / master tone set up to match my other partscasters. I knew the bridge pickup would still need some taming, so I used a 5-way Super Switch to switch in resistors to a tone cap on the bridge and bridge/middle positions. In order to experiment to find the right values I ran the wires for this through to the battery box that came stock on the Roadhouse body (since the Roadhouse guitars come with active preamps and I wasn't using one). This has essentially given me a super useful master tone with a trims for the 1 and 2 positions. I'm super pleased with how it's working so far.

The one bump in the road was the pickguard. I ordered a parchment guard from Warmoth, which is cut to standard Fender specs. However, the roadhouse doesn't use standard specs, so I had to break out my dremel and trim the bridge route by about an eighth of an inch. It wasn't trimmed yet in these photos, but it came out super clean and I don't think anybody would ever notice.

Overall I'm thrilled with this build. It's almost everything I want in a Strat (side jack and EBMM/EVH style truss adjust would be nice). This is also the nicest Warmoth neck I've ordered, the fretwork is basically perfect. I was going to take it to a tech for fret level but it doesn't need it, action is super low but everything rings out clearly, no fretting out, plays incredibly smooth. But enough yapping - here's the guitar.

Video of some quick and dirty improv over a Mayer tune:



And pics...

[RRvh1]

Super cool specs, photos, and playing!
You really know your stuff, both in terms of wailing, and also the nuts & bolts aspect of guitar building. Awesome!

[ArtyBoy]

I've got to say, you're a Real Deal guitar player. I'm sure you played that off the cuff, yet it sounds practiced, and you could put that on an album with no edits. If Eddie looked at that I think he would say, "That's some good stuff!"

[Brett]

I hate you Jedi. Such an amazing effortless player. Love the guitar!

[RRvh1]

I love those Strat tones!

[evhintexas]

Killer playing--killer build

[CalFB]

That is a beautiful guitar. I may hassle you for details via PM when I do my strat build next year. Great playing too, as usual

[Jedi McFly]

Thanks, guys ❤️

@CalFB - Absolutely feel free to hit me up. I love chatting out builds and I'm glad to offer any advice or insight I can. ��

[evhintexas]

Hey--McFly...lol
Could you post pics of your guitar collection--I wanna show my wife. I showed her your strat build and she was like "awesome"...she loved it.

[Jedi McFly]

Hey--McFly...lol
Could you post pics of your guitar collection--I wanna show my wife. I showed her your strat build and she was like "awesome"...she loved it.

Haha, sure. Here are pics of most of them. Not pictured are my Taylor acoustic and my original Peavey Wolfgang.

My two Warmoth/Fender Super Strats:



My Warmoth/Fender "traditional" Tele:



My P90 Thinline/Cabronita hybrid built from a tree that stood in my wife's childhood home:



My Locke/Musikraft Frankenstrat Replica:



My EVH Wolfgang Special, which is currently in the shop for a weird tuning stability issue I couldn't figure out:



And my EVH Wolfgang Standard that I modded to have a 5-way switch, this is my bar gig workhorse.

[track 5]

That is some smooth bad ass playing, dude. Love it. Out.

[Rokgtar]

There's wayy too much awesome in this thread! Love the guitars, your playing, and it looks like you live in paradise too!

[evhintexas]

Cool bro
Thank you

[ScottyBHarris]

When it comes to Strats I've been a partscaster guy, and they've always been Super Strats with HSS or HSH setups and locking trems. I've had the itch for a more traditional Strat for a few years, and its finally come to fruition.

The body is a Fender Deluxe Roadhouse body from the Stratosphere. I picked this for it's contoured heel, two point trem with vintage style saddles, and most importantly to my wife, the Ice Blue Metallic color. It's paired with a Roasted Maple/Rosewood Warmoth neck with my usual specs: 1-5/8" nut width, Wolfgang backshape, compound radius and jumbo stainless frets. A graphtech nut and Gotoh tuners with pearloid buttons adorn the headstock.

For the electronics I took some inspiration from the Silver Sky, most specifically the mid-6k wound pickups and a 275k pot volume pot. I read some great reviews of the Fender Custom Shop Fat '60s over on Strat-Talk.com, so I took a chance on those (and had a set of Texas Specials just in case I didn't like the Fat '60s). Since they're wound at 6.7k with Alnico 2 magnets I figured they may benefit from a hair more brightness with a 275k pot, so I got a bourns low friction 300k pot and used a resistor in parallel to ground to bring it down to 275k. This made the pickups really well balanced - they're nice and fat with a present yet pleasant high end that makes them very versatile.

As I said before, I'm usually a Super Strat (or Wolfgang) guy. Part of that is that I absolutely cannot stand traditional Strat volume knob placement. So I went with a modified master volume / master tone set up to match my other partscasters. I knew the bridge pickup would still need some taming, so I used a 5-way Super Switch to switch in resistors to a tone cap on the bridge and bridge/middle positions. In order to experiment to find the right values I ran the wires for this through to the battery box that came stock on the Roadhouse body (since the Roadhouse guitars come with active preamps and I wasn't using one). This has essentially given me a super useful master tone with a trims for the 1 and 2 positions. I'm super pleased with how it's working so far.

The one bump in the road was the pickguard. I ordered a parchment guard from Warmoth, which is cut to standard Fender specs. However, the roadhouse doesn't use standard specs, so I had to break out my dremel and trim the bridge route by about an eighth of an inch. It wasn't trimmed yet in these photos, but it came out super clean and I don't think anybody would ever notice.

Overall I'm thrilled with this build. It's almost everything I want in a Strat (side jack and EBMM/EVH style truss adjust would be nice). This is also the nicest Warmoth neck I've ordered, the fretwork is basically perfect. I was going to take it to a tech for fret level but it doesn't need it, action is super low but everything rings out clearly, no fretting out, plays incredibly smooth. But enough yapping - here's the guitar.

Video of some quick and dirty improv over a Mayer tune:



And pics...

Nice playing Jedi!

[Jedi McFly]

There's wayy too much awesome in this thread! Love the guitars, your playing, and it looks like you live in paradise too!

Thanks dude. And yeah, besides near constant humidity South Florida ain't too shabby. But at least I never have to adjust my truss rods LOL