The Astrocaster (new strat build)

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

It's been a pretty good year for builds so far, and this is the latest pending one. I'm super excited to get started on the actual work for this one so I figured I'd share what I've done so far while I wait for the rest of the parts.

This one started when I ran across this strat body browsing on Warmoth and it just wouldn't let go of me:

It's a roasted swamp ash strat body that I had them rout for American Standard 2 point bridge. Planning to keep the finish sort of "natural +" w/ minimal clear grain fill, maybe a light dusting of aged clear and/or light brown toner, and thin satin nitro topcoats.

I'm pairing this neck up w/ it:

It's roasted maple w/ an ebony board and vintage modern construction. It's 1 11/16" wide at the nut, has a 10-16" compound radius and the standard thin profile. This will be my first try at the standard thin profile, hopefully it's not too skinny... I had them go ahead and do the LSR nut prep and 27/64" tuner holes. It will remain unfinished aside from clear on the headstock under/over the decals. Not sure if I'll try my hand at dyeing the few streaks in the board or not. I was really grooving on a factory second they had for a couple days (mostly the same specs except for having my favorite '59 roundback profile and a pretty much completely uniform black ebony board) but I slept on it too long and someone else snatched it up.

I'm going w/ the Hipshot Contour bridge and open gear locking tuners, the LSR nut, Fralin SP43 strat pickups at the bridge and neck and a TV Jones Starwood tele neck pickup in the middle. Control/electronics -wise I'm planning to do 1 Vol, 1 Tone w/ a rotary in between for independent middle pup switching and a 4 way blade switch for tele style switching of the neck and bridge pups. It'll have a blower push/pull on the tone pot and off, in phase, out of phase, solo, and strangle for the middle pup and full guitar mute settings on the rotary switch.

Gonna try my hand at painting my own guard and back plate for this one, so far I'm really grooving on the shapes I worked up for them:

The plan is to start w/ clear acrylic blank then do the text and graphical elements in the middle stripe w/ clear waterslide decals, back that up w/ silver metallic lacquer, then the black gloss lacquer for the background.

Here are the latest mockups of the guitar.
Body:


Headstock (the angry sheep badge wound up getting moved to the back of the headstock in the interest of keeping things a bit less busy but I haven't updated this shot):

Full views:


About half of the parts are in already w/ the wood and the bridge/tuners ETA by end of this week and the acrylic blanks and some other random bits arriving next week.

Thanks for looking!

[Shadoweclipse13]

Man, that body and neck!!! I love the project as a whole, but there's definitely something about the feel of the roasted woods. I really dig your wiring plan!!

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Yeah man, both the aesthetics and the feel of the roasted maple/ash/alder bits are great to me. I'm a sucker for the irregular/semi-spalted looking grain types in that body and after a couple of days of trying I figured resistance was futile

I really like my pimped out Classic 50s strat, but I've got it mostly setup and tweaked for Hendrix-y stuff in D# and it really doesn't react well switching it to E standard and back w/o a lot of re-tweaking. This one should be significantly different sounding from that one and a bit more "modern" in approach overall that hopefully neither will feel redundant ?

[Shadoweclipse13]

Yeah man, both the aesthetics and the feel of the roasted maple/ash/alder bits are great to me. I'm a sucker for the irregular/semi-spalted looking grain types in that body and after a couple of days of trying I figured resistance was futile

I really like my pimped out Classic 50s strat, but I've got it mostly setup and tweaked for Hendrix-y stuff in D# and it really doesn't react well switching it to E standard and back w/o a lot of re-tweaking. This one should be significantly different sounding from that one and a bit more "modern" in approach overall that hopefully neither will feel redundant ?

Hell yes. Honestly, just the half step difference makes neither one remotely redundant. And yeah, spalted woods are amazing looking. I went to a local lumber mill for some ash for my slide guitar body and they had SO much sweet looking stuff, I was like "I can't come in here! This place is like porn!" Haha

[BoringPostcards]

Looks like a great idea. It should look awesome. The pickguard reminds me of the Steve Morse Music Man model.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Looks like a great idea. It should look awesome. The pickguard reminds me of the Steve Morse Music Man model.

Thanks man! Me and my luthier friend I showed the mockups to were both thinking the PG had a very Music Man type vibe to it too. I kinda just started w/ the idea of doing a Mustang type top line along the grain line, cutting off the lower horn bit to show as much grain as possible, and leaving the rear line unmolested. Kinda winds up like a modern art pork chop look almost, but I think I like it

[kdanie]

I dig it!!

ken

[blimpage]

Not sure if I'll try my hand at dyeing the few streaks in the board or not.

Are you kidding? They're beautiful, leave them alone!

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Not sure if I'll try my hand at dyeing the few streaks in the board or not.

Are you kidding? They're beautiful, leave them alone!

Yeah, after getting to see it in person, they look great and are a bit less localized the pics lead me to believe so I'll be leaving them alone.

Everything looks and feels great so far. The bridge and middle pickup should be in tomorrow so I ought to be able to string it up soon.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

As of this evening it's officially a guitar :



I had a bit of a challenge when I discovered the Hipshot bushings for the bridge were a good bit smaller than the American Standard size holes I had them drill and the block had zero clearance but happily it just took finding a set of Fender American Standard bridge post bushings and Dremelling 1/8" or so off of the lip for the trem block cavity to get the bridge mounted up. In the process of doing the initial setup I discovered the bass side of the neck flattens out kind of abruptly around the 13th/14th fret but my luthier friend thinks it should be easily addressed w/ some minor fret dressing.

It's playing really nice, resonates very well, and sounds pretty good acoustic so far. I'm planning to at least have it wired up by the end of the weekend. I'm still waiting on my pickguard blanks, knobs, etc. from WD but hopefully the aluminium shield will work well enough to get it playing amplified in the interim.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Finished up the first pass at the wiring diagram so I can get started hooking everything up this afternoon/evening:

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Got all the electronics mounted up on the pickguard shield Friday night. Still waiting on my clear acrylic blanks so I can get started on the pickguard proper:



And I knocked out 90% of the wiring today. Just need to hook up the jack and bridge ground and it should be good to go for a little play testing while I'm waiting for the WD order

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

I finally got back to working on this one over the past week.

I wasn't really feeling the switching for the Starwood when last I was messing w/ it and swapped over the rotary for an SPST push/pull 250K pot so I'd have straight up on/off and blend for it:

I'm really liking the results. The SP43s seem to provide closer to strat sounds than P90s in this guitar, sort of "jazz strat" on the cleaner side of the spectrum w/ a bit more of the P90 character as things are dirtied up. The Starwood works great to dial in some Dyna bite w/ any of the switching options on the SP43s. Only thing I may try before calling the electronics done is making the push/pull on the middle volume pot bypass the SP43s instead of the Starwood.

I spent some time dialing in the setup as well and while I think I'm better served by the '59 roundback profile, it's amazing to play. I couldn't be happier w/ the bridge, the action is super smooth and responsive and tuning is impressively stable set up floating. The whole guitar resonates w/ the strings pretty impressively which I find particularly inspiring to play.

I'm planning to get started on the pickguard over the next week.

[thatfenderguy]

I never thought a different pick guard could make me like a Strat more than I already do.