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Post subject: Bullet Hardtail...pics
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 2:14 pm
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How Do Ya'll,
Well as promised, I got a couple of shots of the used Squier Bullet I picked up at Guitar Center last week for $60. For those who missed my last post on this, I mainly picked her up because I had never seen a Squier hardtail, let alone a Bullet like this...well...that and she was only $60! LOL!!! Hey...for $60, you can never have too many Strats! For the money she's really a rather amazing little guitar...she plays really well, good feel, surprising sustain, etc.. I think I'm going to go ahead and put some decent tuners on her and I may even drop in a set of decent pickups...we'll see.

I apologize for the poor image quality here...with the family issues I have going on, I just really wasn't able to devote a lot of time to being "creative" with my images like I usually do. I did try to do a little more than just snap shots but I really just don't have to the time right now to do anything terribly elaborate with the lighting and such. Anyways, here ya'll go...



Image

In the picture here you can see another recent "acquisition"...a Kustom KLA-80 amp I picked up a few weeks back. I was looking for a basic 1x12 combo that I could use with my Ovation acoustic and I happened across this thing on Craigslist for $50. She's not the loudest amp I've ever heard (a very weak 40 watts) but she's got a really good clean sound and as with the Bullet, for the price it should serve me pretty well.



Image

In this tighter shot here, you can see that the previous owner actually put "Bullets" on the Bullet. Looks a little weird but hey...whatever.



Image

With this shot of the back you can see there is no trem cover...of course because there's no trem! LOL!!! I will say that while she does have a few scratches and some wear, she's not really as bad as this image would indicate...the scratches just really popped out on this pic for some reason. Either way I am going to sit down with her the first time I change the strings and see if I can buff some of those out.


Again for the money, she's actually a pretty cool little axe. Certainly a lot nicer than some of the other $100 instruments I've played and owned in the past.

Anyways, enjoy the pics!

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 6:49 pm
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Cools pics. Thanks for posting. Nice Bullet. (lol) A Bullet Hardtail with bullet strings. Enjoy your new guitar. My prayers are out to you and your family.

RK

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Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 7:37 pm
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rkreisher wrote:
Cools pics. Thanks for posting. Nice Bullet. (lol) A Bullet Hardtail with bullet strings. Enjoy your new guitar. My prayers are out to you and your family.

RK



Thanks for the kind words RK...both in regards to the Bullet and my family. This next week is going to be particularly difficult. The doctors believe that the tumors in my mother's brain are starting to get larger again and as a result, she's pretty much going to be stuck in bed from this point on and is going to require constant 24/7 care. We are exploring some options right now but very simply the family doesn't have a lot of money so those options may be rather limited. As they say though, there's always hope so we'll just have to see what the coming days and weeks have in store.

Again, thank you for the kind thoughts and words...I'm grateful.

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:48 am
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RK

Sorry to hear about your Mom-my prayers go up to God for her,you,and the rest of your family. :(

I've never seen Bullet strings in a hardtail. And is that a 3 ply pickguard on her?

What year is your "new" guitar? I've got a 2002 20th anniversary Squier Affinity Strat in the same color as yours and your Bullet is the only other one I've seen with this shade of blue.

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Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:20 am
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waya wrote:
RK

Sorry to hear about your Mom-my prayers go up to God for her,you,and the rest of your family. :(

I've never seen Bullet strings in a hardtail. And is that a 3 ply pickguard on her?

What year is your "new" guitar? I've got a 2002 20th anniversary Squier Affinity Strat in the same color as yours and your Bullet is the only other one I've seen with this shade of blue.


First and foremost, thank you again for the kind words and thoughts in regards to my mother and my family situation. Honestly, ya deal with it...not much else you can do.

Yea...the Bullet strings are a bit of a mystery. As I bought the guitar used from a store, it's impossible to guess what may have been going thru the original owners mind there. Maybe he/she got the strings on sale, maybe they had a pack laying around from another Strat that did have a trem or perhaps the person was just an inexperienced player and someone told them or they read somewhere that "Fender Bullet strings are good to use on a Strats"...who knows. Sooner or later I'll probably slap some Super 250's on her and that will be that. As of right now, the strings are in fairly decent shape though so they'll stay on there until they need to be changed.

Yes...3 ply pickguard. No clue if it's original or not but I suspect it is. There's some rather heavy scratches on both the body and the pickguard from someone having a rather "heavy handed" right hand technique. At the very least, to me this indicates that the pickguard has been on there for a while. That's not to say that it wasn't changed the moment someone bought the guitar new...kind of hard to say.

Not sure about the year yet...haven't had time to run the numbers. That said, on the back of the headstock is "Made in Indonesia" so that seems to indicate that she may be around the same year as your Affinity and the color would seem to confirm this. That was anther (small) reason for the purchase...I had never seen that shade of blue on a Strat before (or anything else that I can remember). All and all she just seemed to be a somewhat unique instrument and for the price...you get the idea.

Alrighty that's about it for now...gotta run out to the hospice today and see how Mom's doing.

L8r,
Jim


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Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:30 am
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waya wrote:
RK

Sorry to hear about your Mom-my prayers go up to God for her,you,and the rest of your family. :(

I've never seen Bullet strings in a hardtail. And is that a 3 ply pickguard on her?

What year is your "new" guitar? I've got a 2002 20th anniversary Squier Affinity Strat in the same color as yours and your Bullet is the only other one I've seen with this shade of blue.


After you mentioned it, I got curious and ran downstairs and grabbed the guitar real quick. The serial number is ic303924121. I tried to run this really quick but didn't come up with much. I know that the "i" means Indonesia and that the "c" means "Core-tek" (or Cort) but I can't find anything that indicates what the date of manufacture may actually be. Maybe the "03" means 2003?

Thoughts?


L8r,
Jim


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Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 9:09 pm
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First, let me say that my heart goes out to you...My mother was very sick this year...near death for weeks, and it was a wrenching experience. She pulled through, thank God, but there were many nights when i went to sleep not knowing if she'd be alive when i woke. I know you are going through a really difficult time and I wish you strength. Let you mother know how much you love her.

As for your new Squier, it's funny because I almost won the exact same guitar on ebay a few days ago. it was a blue hardtail bullet. i got outbid by a couple of dollars right near the end, but i was okay with that because I actually prefer trems, and i won one a day later (only $49, but a steep $35 shipping.)

getting a strat like yours for $60 is just absurd. as you said, how can you have too many at these prices? maybe that's why i've bought 3 Squiers in the past 5 weeks!


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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:07 am
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peskypesky wrote:
First, let me say that my heart goes out to you...My mother was very sick this year...near death for weeks, and it was a wrenching experience. She pulled through, thank God, but there were many nights when i went to sleep not knowing if she'd be alive when i woke. I know you are going through a really difficult time and I wish you strength. Let you mother know how much you love her.


Thank you very much for the kind words. I think this is possibly one of my biggest worries...that she's going to pass away in the middle of the night. I don't know why but it seems as though virtually everyone in my family who has passed away had done so at 3 a.m....you're laying there sound asleep and the phone rings... you get the idea.

While I am personally a great believer in "where there is life, there is hope", the truth of the situation is that I don't think my mother really has too much longer. This last week they moved her from a hospice to a nursing care facility close to my father's house as she really requires around the clock care at this point. The doctors believe that the brain tumors are getting larger again and it's affecting her balance (as well as her speech, her memory and so on). Basically if she moves her head too quickly, the room starts spinning for her so she can't even get out of bed.

The good news is that they have her on some decent meds so she's not in a lot of pain right now and the situation for the moment is probably about as good as it could be all things considered. She's got good care, she's only about 5 minutes from my Dad's house so he can get over to see her every day and for the most part she's sleeping most of the time anyways. At this point all we can really do is wait and try and make her as comfortable as possible.

Quote:
As for your new Squier, it's funny because I almost won the exact same guitar on ebay a few days ago. it was a blue hardtail bullet. i got outbid by a couple of dollars right near the end, but i was okay with that because I actually prefer trems, and i won one a day later (only $49, but a steep $35 shipping.)


I think I actually saw the one you're talking about...I was browsing Ebay myself a few days ago (just doing a little "window shopping:) and saw a Bullet hardtail.

On the shipping thing...I'm sure you probably do this too, but I always look at the shipping costs and factor that in to my bid on virtually any item on Ebay (or even Amazon.com). Yea...some of the people are getting really outrageous on shipping charges. I think in their minds they are making up for an item they know isn't going to command much money so that jack up the s&h to compensate for their loss. The problem is that I think most people take that in to account when they are bidding so the actual auction ends up being even lower still.

That said, $35 to ship a guitar isn't that terrible really. Unless you have a corporate account with FedEx or UPS, shipping on an item that large can get a bit pricey. Obviously once you get a guitar packed up properly, the package is going to be "over-sized" and depending on the guitar itself and the packing material, it can be a little heavy as well. Personally I don't mind paying [i]a little]/i] extra for good packing...what I hate is when the jack up the shipping price and the item shows up in a Rice Krispies box wrapped in duct tape! I literally had that happen a couple of months back with some DVDS...really honked me off.

Quote:
getting a strat like yours for $60 is just absurd. as you said, how can you have too many at these prices? maybe that's why i've bought 3 Squiers in the past 5 weeks!


Yea...I've gone kind of crazy this last year myself. In fact just a few days after I got the hardtail here, I actually got ANOTHER Strat...this time a Made in Korea Squier which I got in trade for a couple of old fx pedals I don't use any more. The body on this one ended up being a really cheap plywood but the neck was nice and the pickups were actually pretty awesome, so I used the parts on another Strat project I've been working on. So let's see...in the past year that makes 4 Strats and one Yamaha bass that I've picked up, 2 Strats that I've built, a Johnson acoustic, and 1 Alesis electronic drum kit as well. Yea...I guess the wife has a pretty good reason for having a bit of an attitude about it! LOL!!!

BTW...I had posted this over on the Strat forum a few days back, but here's a pic of the Strat I built with the parts from that Korean I just mentioned...


Image


As I said, the neck and pickups came from a '92 MIk Squier and the body is actually from a '04 Indonesian Squier Standard. I had refinished the body earlier this year as something of an experiment...I was messing about with finishes trying to get that "50's 2-tone sunburst". The neck I had on their before was from an old Lotus Strat copy but it never really fit right...the MIK of course fit like a glove. Of course those pickup covers and plastic from the MIK also gives it even more of a real vintage look. I'm not sure if I'm really going to keep this one...I have another that's very similar in appearance that's a much nicer instrument (also built from parts) but I haven't really decided either way there yet. Considering the "Road Worn" and Relic craze right now, I'm thinkin' I could probably get $250 or better for her so....eh...I dunno.

As far as the Bullet goes...I'm actually thinking about trading it already. There's a guitar show coming up next week out here on the North Coast and I'm taking a couple of my cheaper guitars with me...the 2 Bullets, a Tetoma acoustic, a few pedals I don't use any more and maybe an amp or two. There was a guy out there in the spring who had a Fender MIJ Strat that needed some work so if he's there again and still has it, I'm going to see what kind of horse trading I can do.

Alrighty, that's about all for now. Again thank you for the kind words and thoughts...it is appreciated.

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:33 am
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Jim,
That sunburst you made looks GORGEOUS! Great job. And I take it you're a professional photographer from the beautiful photo.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's gone Squier-Crazy in 2009. I arrived home with another guitar in a gig bag last night and the girlfriend said, "What's this? Another guitar? We're going to have to find a bigger apartment if you keep this up."

Little does she know I have three more in my office that I'll be trying to sneak home in the coming weeks. :)


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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:13 am
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peskypesky wrote:
Jim,
That sunburst you made looks GORGEOUS! Great job. And I take it you're a professional photographer from the beautiful photo.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's gone Squier-Crazy in 2009. I arrived home with another guitar in a gig bag last night and the girlfriend said, "What's this? Another guitar? We're going to have to find a bigger apartment if you keep this up."

Little does she know I have three more in my office that I'll be trying to sneak home in the coming weeks. :)


Semi-professional photographer...meaning that I'm not actually making a living at it yet. I also like to experiment...in this case, I shot that picture after dark with all the lights off in the living room and I used a MAGlite to light the guitar...they call it "painting with light". I really like this method for shooting guitars as it tends to lend a bit of an ethereal quality to the image. It's really hard to do with "people" (or other "live" subjects) as it requires a long shutter speed...in this case, I think I had the shutter set around 15 seconds, but with inanimate objects it can produce some really cool results.

Not including the Yamaha bass or the Johnson acoustic (or the drum kit), I've actually brought home 5 Squiers this last year...two Standards (one China, one Indo), two Bullets (also one China and one Indo) and the Korean. The MIC Standard is one of those Standard "Specials" in the Cherry burst finish...simply a lovey and wonderful guitar...except for new pickups (Fender VN's), I haven't done much to that one...and don't plan too. The Indo Squier is now split between two other project Strats...the body you saw above and the neck is on this one...


Image

I had gotten the Indonesian Standard as another "bargain"...she was $100. I bought her specifically for the neck to use on this project but I figured it was still well worth it because I knew I'd use the body as well sooner or later (which, obviously I did). I figure if I can sell the one above for that $200 - $250, that covers the cost of the parts in -both- guitars so it's like I got a really nice Strat for free! LOL!!!

I did change the headstock logo to match the aesthetics of the instrument on this one. Don't worry, I left the "Crafted in Indonesia" as well as the original serial number in tact on the back of the headstock...I'm not planning on selling this one, the logo change was strictly for my own aesthetic appeal. The body on this one was purchased separately...I never did find out what it was off of (I know it's not a Fender/Squier), but it's real alder and the bridge spacing allowed me to use an MIM big block trem. I still haven't found "the right" pickups for her though...she's got some Fender MIJ's in her now that sound decent, but I know I can get more out of her...I'm leaning towards a set of Duncans or maybe even some EMGs at some point. As you can see though, she is quite similar to the project Strat in the other pic above...not quite identical by any means, but very similar and a really great guitar. I'm not really sure I need two of them though...which is why I'm considering selling the other.

BTW...one the whole "you bought another guitar?" issue...most of the time my wife just looks at me and rolls her eyes any more. She has been getting a bit "fussy" about it lately as I have gone a little crazy...she's probably going to sh*t an egg roll if I bring home another one from that guitar show without selling/trading a couple! LOL!!! Fortunately my wife is a musician herself...she's an outstanding singer, she plays flute, bass and hand percussion so she does understand "GAS", and is usually pretty tolerant :-).

Peace,
Jim


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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:34 am
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aha! you painted with light! as a photographer myself, i knew you had done something out of the ordinary on that shot. i will have to try that technique out myself. :)

and the guitar in the second photo is ridiculously beautiful. i have to admit i'm a little confused about which guitar is which and where the parts came from and all.


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Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:05 pm
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peskypesky wrote:
aha! you painted with light! as a photographer myself, i knew you had done something out of the ordinary on that shot. i will have to try that technique out myself. :)


Yes...I HIGHLY recommend playing with this technique. The one suggestion that I would make is that you shoot several shots when you're trying this as no two shots come out exactly the same. I will typically set up the camera on my tripod, get it focused with the lights on and switch the lens over to "manual" so it doesn't try to re-focus in the dark when I hit the shutter. Also, if you don't already make sure you shoot in RAW so you can adjust stuff like the shadows and such in pp...makes a huge difference. Otherwise, just use a long enough exposure to really work the light around on the "subject"...I usually work between 10 and 20 seconds. I will usually try and aim the light from a relatively high angle to avoid reflections using a fairly tight beam...this is why I use a MAGlite...it's got an adjustable beam. Also a Maglite seems to have a more balanced color temperature than a regular flash light (although that could certainly be adjusted in post). Don't try to diffuse the beam either...the tighter sharp beam seems to work the best for "painting".

Play with it...you'll get the idea. Works really nice with flower shots too....



Image




Quote:
and the guitar in the second photo is ridiculously beautiful. i have to admit i'm a little confused about which guitar is which and where the parts came from and all.


Thank you....I did actually put a great deal more work in to the finish on the guitar in the second photo. Again, the body in the first photo was a bit of an experiment...I had done the guitar in the second photo first (stay with me here...) and while it did come out quite nice, it wasn't exactly what I was going for.

The point of the first project (the one in the second picture) was to create an instrument that had a bit of a vintagy look and sound but had a more modern feel. Most of that instrument was intentional...again except for the color. The second project there (the first picture) was more along the lines of "hell...I have all these vintage looking parts, why not put them together in to one guitar and see how she flies", LOL!!!

Ok...I should probably explain a few things here. When I'm doing a burst finish such as these, I don't really use "traditional" methods for the guitar finishes....in other words, I cheat. With the first guitar (the one in the second picture), I actually used regular wood stain and applied it in the same manor as you would if you were doing a bookcase or something to get the basic color I wanted and then I used an air brush to do the "burst" (aka the black around the edge). Afterwards, I applied the clear lacquer over the wood stain. The problem here is that the color didn't really come out like I wanted...it was just a bit too brown. It was still very nice though so I had put a lot more effort in to the final polishing. Unfortunately I did have a couple of "sand thrus" in the final polishing on the other hand, it sort of gives it a natural worn look. Either way, I wanted to figure out why the finish wasn't quite what I wanted.

As such, I did some reading on how Fender used to do their finishes and I discovered that in the early days, they used to stain the bodies yellow before they applied the finish. I thought "A ha!" so since I had the second body laying around (the guitar in the first picture), I'd give this a try. So when I did this second 2 tone...again the guitar in the first picture, I did just that...I stained the body yellow first. Since I'm using acrylic lacquers, I used an acrylic based paint, which I really thinned out to use as the stain. I allowed it to sit for several days to dry and then I used the same color stain as in the first guitar (second picture) but instead of applying as a stain, I used my air brush and applied it more like a paint. After that, I again applied the burst with the airbrush as well. Then I again applied a clear lacquer over the top of it all. Now in this case since it was again more of an experiment, I didn't really put much effort in to the final polishing. I really wanted to see how the yellow pre-stain would affect the over-all color....that was all I was really concerned with as apposed to making a decent guitar here. I had made a number of mistakes along the way on this one but I found out what I needed to know. As such, this one really has much more of a relic look to it than the other.

Ya with me so far??? LOL!!!

As to the parts, the guitars in both pictures are basically made from a total of 3 different guitars, a '04 Indo Squier Standard, a '92 Korean Squier and an alder body of unknown origin. In addition, I also used parts (the pickguard specifically) from the Bullet that started this thread as well as some pickups that I got at a show. The guitar in the first picture has the body of the '04 Indo Standard with the neck and pickups of the '92 Korean. Since I hadn't put as much effort in to the final polish here, the over all look of the body finish really works with the natural worn look of the '92 Korean parts. She also has the 3 ply pickguard from the hardtail Bullet which I then replaced with a single ply pickguard (the single ply is now on the bullet). The bridge is this one is the one that came on the '04 Indo body as well.

The guitar in the second picture has the alder body of unknown origin with the neck of the '04 Indo along with the Japanese pickups from a guitar show. The trem was ordered seperately off Ebay and again is an MIM big block trem. I bought the trem specifically for this guitar. BTW...on this guitar, I also did a little something special to go with that aesthetic...I ordered a vintage correct neck plate...



Image

The six digit serial number here is like what you would see on an early 70's Strat but in fact I had this custom engraved and it's actually my birthday, 19th of August, 1965. Dumb little detail thing, but it gave me a thrill :-). Even here you can see a little "scuff" from a sand through on this finish...oopppsss.

Confuzzled? I know I am!!! LOL!!!

Anyways, I hope that explains a few things as to which is which and what and why I did what I did.


Have fun figuring that all out! I have a headache now...time to go have some pudding.

Peace,
Jim


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