Building a Fender Strat from scratch! Part 1

...well, not exactly from scratch. I purchased a Fender mahogany strat deluxe body from The Stratosphere on ebay, then a Fender 60th anniversary neck from nadimp809. I installed locking sperzel tuners. Here's a pic of the beginning of the project:


I'm very happy with the potential, the neck is beautiful and the body's excellent. I have always preferred mahogany. I have a PRS SE that I modded with Kinman pickups, locking PRS tuners to function as my strat. PRS SEs are IMHO the best deals going - inexpensive, well-made mahogany guitars that play fantastic! 25" scale, too which is great for my smaller hands. I know the strat has 25.5" scale, which translates into a more transparent tone (to my ears). The longer scale will provide more of the fundamental pitch. Shorter scales seem to provide more overtones, which explains why Strat tone is often referred to as 'transparent'.

Next step for this project is to assemble all the parts I need: pickguard, bridge, electronics, etc. I already have the Kinman pickups that I am really happy with. They are dead silent on gigs and sound like a vintage single coil. More in the next post!

Cheers,
p