"I really like playing my guitars. Y’know, they don’t call it working my guitars, right?"
― Mark Shaiken
That's this guitar's name ― when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! This S-Type electric guitar came together haphazardly, initially as just a replacement body for one of my American Vintage II Stratocasters. After I had already ordered the body from Warmoth, I found a less expensive Fender one for the AMVII. Given high cancelation fees, I decided to order a custom Warmoth neck and make a project out of it. Though the body color wasn't quite what I expected (yellow instead of orange), I made it work with black plastic parts ― here's the finished guitar:
Though all the chrome hardware is Fender, I decided to go Seymour Duncan crazy on the pickups:
Bridge: JB Jr. Humbucker
The JB Jr. model will take your Strat to a whole new level. In the bridge position, this high output single coil sized humbucker will give you nice crunchy chords and screaming lead tone with that classic upper midrange cut. There will be tons of bright harmonic sparkle, and a tight focused low end.
Middle: Duckbucker
The Duckbucker is a single-coil sized humbucker designed to be wired in parallel to give you a vintage, sparkly, single-coil tone without any hum. Its unique, split-pole pattern, with three pole pieces on each coil, also contributes to the single-coil bounciness and snappy low end.
Neck: Little 59
The Little ‘59 bridge model is a single coil sized humbucker that will inject the sound of a Les Paul directly into your Stratocaster. Its medium output and scooped mids will really add depth to your bridge position. The 4-conductor lead wire gives you access to parallel and split wiring options for added versatility. This pickup is a drop-in for any standard single coil pickup route.
Fender Vintage Bridge ...
The pickups ...
Another pickup shot ...
And the tuners ...
I went with road worn vintage tuning machines and weathered the headstock a bit to match the look. I'm not necessarily into the whole relic guitar thing, but it works to an extent. Anyway, the guitar sounds amazing and as a custom build it came out considerably lower in cost than I anticipated. As with other guitar projects, it was a great learning experience. It might be fun to create a build completely from scratch, but it is honestly more fun simply playing them!
All images © 2023 Mike McDowell