Customer Number One

[apl]

Meanwhile, on another board...

..... well first let me say ...




I got it in Wed., and took it out of the box and to my gig last night to try out. I guess I was pretty confident 'cause I didn't even take a back-up ..... it either worked right or I was screwed!

It's pretty bad-ass. You've seen pics of it already: https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=267182
and it'll be a week or so before I get around to taking more but it looks great with the black and mirror and chrome, chrome CHROME!!!

Yes, it's a strat and yes, apl assembled parts .... he didn't cut out the neck or body or anything. And I chose the critical parts like the p'ups and such although apl chose the neck and body.
But he did a first rate job of assembling it with careful attention to details .... even down to nice little felt washers behind the strap buttons.

But the place where he showed his stuff was the neck and fret dressing.
He stripped the finish from the neck and did some mojo to it ..... maybe tung oil? I don't know but, to use his description, it plays like butter!
I've already had the guitarists that were at my gig last nite shit themselves over how nice the neck felt. It plays so well that I'm having to get used to the ease of bending strings. Hell of a fret job there apl!
I may even go up to a higher gauge string set because it plays so easy ..... no shit. This is absolutely one of the best playing gits I've ever played on ..... really nice.

And the sound? Dudes and dudettes ..... it screams. I chose the Guitar Fetish overwound strat p'ups. Guitar Fetish describes them as being as hot as they can wind them and still have a strat sound.
Still, I'm a humbucker guy and always when people bring their little wimpy single coil gits up to play on my rig, I have to turn everything up quite a bit. So last night when I set up I said to myself, "Well ..... better go ahead and crank everything up for starters and go from there."
Well where I went from there was right back down to the original humbucker levels because, to my astonishment .... these p'ups are as hot as the Guitar Fetish humbuckers I've been using and those humbuckers are HOT! I mean .... hotter than most humbuckers. And yet ..... these GF single coils were just as hot. It was actually a little mindblowing. Sounded awesome and I'm not blowing smoke ..... I've had literally hundreds of guitars and I used to be in business with a guy in the 70's building gits so I know my shit about the things and this is a first-rate ax with first rate sound.
And, despite being single coil, it was quiet ..... he lined the control cavity with copper I believe and it did the trick ..... no buzzing except with my high-gain pedal which always buzzes with anything.

I was truly impressed and thrilled with the way it played and sounded ...... can't overstate it ..... apl built me what is likely to be my signature git.
The gig I was at last night had several players in the audience and everyone of them came up and plotzed themselves over this git ...... very cool.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you're liking it. Have you named her yet?

A couple of clarifications...

The neck is Mighty Mite licensed Strat compound radius with ebony fingerboard. I bought it with the fret job already done. After judging there wasn't any more I could do to improve the fretwork, I didn't do anything, leaving them with more life. I did install and cut a Graphtech nut. I stripped the poly off the back of the neck and refinished it with tung oil. I also applied the logo and some clear finish on the front of the headstock.

The control and pickup cavities are completely shielded with copper tape, both in the body and on the pickguard. The tape has a conductive adhesive and dots of solder at joints were applied to enhance conductivity.

On the electronics side, each pup was wired into a DPDT center off mini-toggle, so any pup can be on, off, in or out of phase. Tone controls work on the bridge and neck pups. A tone bypass cap was added to the volume circuit so that rolling off volume didn't knock down the highs as much.

The inspiration was the desire for a guitar that sounded like a great Strat and played like a Carvin.

mrs apl asked if I was happy with it. I had to think for a while. In the end there are three things we require of our guitars, in order of priority- playability, tone, and looks. I'm happy with those aspects of this guitar and am beyond honored to have the good Lt keeping her busy.

Oh, and as for me having a great Strat tone and buttery playing, I did a level, crown, and polish and some nutwork on my faux Strat and it's smmooooove, baby!

I am happy.

 

[Milnoque]

I am happy.

You have every right to be, Congratulations!!!

 

[Roguetitan]

Congrats!
You do good work BTW

 

[antichef]

very nice -- congrats!

 

[apl]

An update...

... guys .... this is the BOMB!

You can run any pickup on/off and reverse the phase of any p'up.


There's an unbelievable variety of sounds you can get.
For instance .... if you turn on the bridge and middle p/up and add the neck p/up out of phase with the first two .... when you turn the tone down on the neck p'up, it sounds just like a freakin' wah wah!!! It was too cool .... you could set it as if it were a wah you were leaving in one position! ..... and 5 or 6 usable different clean sounds ...... same with rock sounds ..... an amazing number of distinct tones.

They had this bad-ass local jazz guitarist come in tonight and I let him play it.
I had it running thru my Orange Tiny Terror into a Celestion 10".
He started playing around with the sounds and when he finished he said, "Man ... that's a GREAT guitar. All the different sounds it gets ......"




I'm really happy with it.


Just have to clean that mirror every gig!