K
KaBudokan
New member
Around October of last year I started thinking of building a guitar. I put a good amount of thought into it and talked around quite a bit before finally deciding on the specs, etc. I ordered the parts in November, and I finally have completed my USA Custom Guitars superstrat.
Specs:
I did the finish myself. It was my first time, so it's not perfect, but it came out really well, considering. (It looks great in pictures, and you can only really see the very minor flaws close-up.
) The body is nitro, and the neck is a light polyurethane.
I recorded a few quick clips for a very curious and insistent friend. lol They're not great, but he wanted to hear what it sounded like... So, in the two days since I wired it up (which still needs some tweaking), I have these two clips:
This first one is a short clip pretty much using just the bridge pickup (I think the lead was the bridge/neck combo)- IMO it is close to the P-90 sound Bill Lawrence was shooting for. (It's hard not to play classic rock-style riffs with that pickup on...)
And here's a long, boring, mostly clean clip, using mainly the #2 in-between position (with maybe a little too much chorus! lol):
Both tracks were recorded direct through a Yamaha DG Stomp.
Specs:
- Alder body
- 5A Quilt Maple top
- USA-2 maple neck
- Figured Madagascar rosewood fingerboard
- 12" radius
- 6150 frets
- .890 assymetrical contour
- 1 11/16" neck width
- 25 1/2" Scale Length
- Top-adjust truss rod
- Paua shell dot inlays
- Callaham Tremolo
- Sperzel locking tuners
- Graphtech trem-nut
- Bill Lawrence L-290 neck and middle
- Bill Lawrence L-495 bridge (This is Bill's version of a P-90 in a full HB size - it's not listed on his site yet, and I happen to have L-495 #1!)
- Q-Filter on the bridge tone control
- Neck on push/pull on volume
I did the finish myself. It was my first time, so it's not perfect, but it came out really well, considering. (It looks great in pictures, and you can only really see the very minor flaws close-up.

I recorded a few quick clips for a very curious and insistent friend. lol They're not great, but he wanted to hear what it sounded like... So, in the two days since I wired it up (which still needs some tweaking), I have these two clips:
This first one is a short clip pretty much using just the bridge pickup (I think the lead was the bridge/neck combo)- IMO it is close to the P-90 sound Bill Lawrence was shooting for. (It's hard not to play classic rock-style riffs with that pickup on...)
And here's a long, boring, mostly clean clip, using mainly the #2 in-between position (with maybe a little too much chorus! lol):
Both tracks were recorded direct through a Yamaha DG Stomp.