New Axe to Hot Rod

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apl

apl

Stand Up Comity
I bought a new Squier Bullet, Baltic Blue, to hot rod.

It was $90 at GC, and they threw in a set of Nanowebs.

The bridge and tuners are crap, as you'd expect. The neck ain't too bad, really.

I scored Gotohs, $24, a bridge, $17, and ferrules, $9, off ebay.

This'll be fun! :cool:
 
Love to see it when you're done. I've had one of these in my hands a number of times but never pulled the trigger. You really can't go that wrong for $90.
 
see if you can score a "neck-thru" for the bullet from e-bay and you are set :D




j/k ...

keep us posted
alfred
 
Yeah. I got a $100 gift card for a local music store that had that Bullet Guitar for $99.00. I considered buying it making it a baritone, but I didn't. I opted to keep looking till I knew for sure what I wanted. Anyway, hope your hot rod screams when you're done.

Chris
 
Wow, what sloppy workmanship! It'll all be fixed when I get it done, though.

Last night I installed the new tuners and took apart the rest of guitar in preparation for drilling the through holes for the strings. When I removed the pickguard, there was a capacitor with broken leads lying in the body, and the tone capicator was not connected!

Also, it looked like they put some conductive paint to shield the control cavity but the needed more clearance for the switch so some of the paint had been chiseled off.
 
I found one at the MF clearance center her in KC last night for $68. I figured I was losing money if I didn't buy it.

APL - What bridge did you buy?
 
Black. The selection there is sort of like a Model T Ford. You can have any color you want as long as it's black.
 
Cool. Mine's Baltic Blue, which has a hint of grey in it. With the black pups and white pickguard it'll look like an Estonian flag.
 
I'm leaning towards buying a prewired Carvin Pickguard. I'm just not sure if I want to spend more for that than I did for the entire guitar. :D
I haven't takn anything off of the guitar yet. Was there one big hole under the pickguard, or individual ones for the pickups?
 
One big one.

I just got some copper for shielding off eBay, 2 pcs 8×10, $8.

I though about getting the Carvin pickguard, too. But after I thought about it, I've got a DC135 so if I need those tones, I'm good to go. Thus, I thought I'd do something more Stratty.

Someone at another board turned me on to the Fat-o-caster which looks way cool. I used to have a Fender Mustang with Duncans and a Mighty Mite brass string-through bridge so I had the neck+bridge and neck+bridge out of phase options. Mighty phat if I remember right.
 
I played a black one last night (friend bought it for her dad). Played nice, sounded stratty. I freaked out when I picked up for the first time, it was so light. So I set it next to my old strat "1984" and it looked so thin, wow. :eek: Keep us posted. I had given some thought to buying one to hot rod.
 
apl said:
Last night I installed the new tuners and took apart the rest of guitar in preparation for drilling the through holes for the strings. When I removed the pickguard, there was a capacitor with broken leads lying in the body, and the tone capicator was not connected!

Also, it looked like they put some conductive paint to shield the control cavity but the needed more clearance for the switch so some of the paint had been chiseled off.
Click to expand...

Now this will never be vintage :mad:













































J/K :D Sounds like a fun project!
 
Got the bridge installed over the weekend. I remembered a lot of valuable woodworking lessons. If I have to do this again I’ll get bits that cut the edge of the hole first and a drill press.

The new bridge is string through, so I needed to drill holes through the body. I put the new bridge in place and drilled a small pilot hole through the body which knocked a big chip of paint off. :mad: I put the bridge on the back to use as a template for the rest of the holes but it was crooked :mad: so my holes didn’t line up very well. Even drilling from the back side with a new bit for the ferrules chipped off a lot of finish but I saved the bigger pieces to glue back on.

Next time I’ll do better.
 
I got the pups wired last night and the pickguard reattached. I put the Elixir Nanoweb 10s that GC had thrown in on the guitar. Tools and tuner at the ready, I began the setup.

This is when the difference between the guitar building craft and the crap became obvious. First there is the nut. The bottom of the slots in the nut should be the exact same distance off the fingerboard as the top of a fret. On the Bullet this is not the case, the higher strings sit further above the board than the lower strings, and all are way too high. This can screw with intonation and action. I forged ahead, setting the action to about 1/16 of an inch and tuning it up. I worked the truss rod to get an almost imperceptible bow in the neck. Then I played around the fingerboard. There were issues with high and low frets buzzing out certain positions so I started raising the action until that cleared up. The action was probably less than an 1/8” when I was done, which ain’t shabby. But my regular guitar is a Carvin DC135 which has guaranteed 1/16” action. This part of the experience made me appreciate the precision with which a neck has to be made to get that kind of action.

After working the saddles, truss rod and tuners, I arrived at a reasonable compromise and plugged her in. What do ya know, it sounded Stratty! A lot different than the Carvin for sure.

The next step will be working with my amp and modeler to get good tones.
 
Hey, I never finished this!

Ended up hiring a guy to fix the nut issue and the action got way better. Decent beater guitar with good strat tone for not much money.
 
Hmmmm....I have been itching to get into an axe project, to familarize myself with them on a more intimate level. I kinda put that idea to the side though.

This has brought it to the forefront of my bwain once more. I am going to be on the prowl and the make too....this could be a shark project for sure. :D

Thanks for the rustling of the waves APL.
 
apl, you might be able to hide the issue on the back where you chipped the paint (drilling the body-through string holes) by countersinking the holes and installing some small metal ferrules.
 
Zaphod B said:
apl, you might be able to hide the issue on the back where you chipped the paint (drilling the body-through string holes) by countersinking the holes and installing some small metal ferrules.
Click to expand...

The chips are bigger than the ferrules! :eek: :eek: :eek: It was a combination of the cheap, soft plywood body and the super hard and thick paint.
 
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