craigtyers's posterous

The Lemon

Last year i bought, from eBay, a 'project' guitar.
That is a guitar that has seen better times in need of some improving.
The one I bought was a Squire Stratocaster, that had been poorly refinished in a very vibrant yellow.
When it arrived I was not expecting much, the yellow was indeed lurid, but much to my surprise it played fairly well, so well in fact that i took it with me to my local open mic night.

Over the next few weeks i stripped the guitar back to bare wood, (via its original finish which was a sunburst) - it almost got left as a 'Rory Gallagher' strat, but I decided a full strip and the Danish oil finish was the way to go.
I also replaced the nut with a graphite one, leveled, dressed, and polished the frets, lightly sanded the back of the neck, refitted the neck- (sorting out the pitch whilst i was at it).

On the electronics front, i replaced the pick ups with some hand wound high out-put ones i found on eBay, and rewired the whole thing, including a chromecaster style selector in place of the second tone pot (I say chromecaster style, as, whilst mine does the same job, I can't guarantee its exactly the same - I reverse engineered the chrome caster based on the instillation instructions and the out put switching tables).

 

To fit the chromecaster i first had to remove a little material from the control cavity- i added copper earthing tape to the cavety whilst i was there!


Finally, on a cosmetic whim i swapped the original single ply white pick guard for a 3 ply black one.

A morning on the bench for a set up (replacing the old trem springs made a big difference!) and the decent guitar i got of eBay is now a LOVELY guitar (IMHO).

So good in fact that it was once again taken out to play, this time an actual gig!

So now that that one has been complete since February ...

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Vintage Trouble - Pre gig accoustic show at the Kings Head

We also managed to charm our way into the exclusive pre-show acoustic set at the kings head! which was fantastic!

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After the Vintage Trouble Gig - I got a look at the pedal board

I Managed to get a look at the guitarists pedal board - nice! (Poor photography - but it was LATE!)

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Ajax Updating and dynamic titles added

The relentles (ly slow) march towards a satisfing web site continues a-(as previoulsy implyed slow)-pace.

Today we add a nice ajax pull for new posts amd some dynamic page titles.

Next its twitter integration and paging.

Then perhaps a media list (contents style) for each post.

Then we may look at adding a few 'permanat post' links for things such as 'about me' or 'contact me'

-its all good fun!