Electric Guitar Kit ST-Style : My own design.

I really like the Statocaster body shape but did not want to build a Stratocaster! I carefully looked over the body to see what could be done. Mine came in 3 pieces of basswood, light yet resonant. Two parts had good grain match, the last piece was not- a solid finish it had to be. I sanded the cut contours to a deeper finish (forearm arm and rib-cage contours) and routed the pick up cavities to accept any pick up. I then decided to mount all the pu's at an angle, like the bridge pu.

I then designed a 3-piece mounting pick guard without the typically Fender jack socket plate to be a simple flat surface mount and rearranged the switch and control knob positions.

The headstock shape was next. After many drawings and a look on the net to see if I'd by accident copied any other design, I cut the profile. Also rounded the neck to headstock profile. Finished with amber tint cellulose it turned out very well. The maple even had some birdseye figuring! Frets polished and rosewood board oiled.

Now the hard and expensive part - how to finish the body? I went for midnight blue boat enamel thinned down and using a good brush...allright from a foot or more. Cellulose lacquer is expensive with additional postage charges and hard to get. It is also soft and on basswood will dent and scratch very easily.

The tremello bridge and tuners passed my 'fit for purpose' inspection and went on the guitar...stays in tune alright but both feel seem a little stiff when operating. Live with it. Pick ups are ceramic flat plate types under non magnetic polepieces and sound like an electric guitar! I am not a "tone" obsessive person. A magnetic field is just a magnetic field! In fact your strings are more important for a good tone. The magnets simply impart a weak magnetism within steel/nickel strings and then the strings vibrate...the moving field intersects the coil windings and that, folks, is the induced signal sent to the amp!

To conclude - I built the kit to look as different as a Strat could possibly be from parts that pass muster. The best thing is that the neck fitted the pocket nice and tight and the resulting combination resonates nicely with reasonable sustain and " twangy-ness"! Pleased by the result...