Sure, for Gibsons. However, Fender claims that it has never (ever) marked and sold any guitars as seconds.

So that "2" must have been put there by a previous owner.

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

I've seen atleast one other Fender stamped with a 2 so I doubt its just a coincidence

Hmmm. Thing is, I think the neck will be in perfect condition once I work on it. Assuming the stamp IS indeed for a defected neck would probably be because of the lousy gluing of the skunk stripe (which could be fixed!) or the screw holes. Apart from that, seems like solid construction to me!

And yeah, the tuners are the ones that come with the strat plus. All the pics I googled on that had the exact same tuners (which have a rather odd shape from the back, so I doubt a lot of manufacturers will bother copying something and making in such high quality anyway).

I was thinking if this turns out to be a factory second, I won't bother making this project a very expensive strat for resale value reasons. I mean, even if I do end up with a perfect neck, it still has that ugly "2" stamped on the back and it won't sell like I want it to. And I have this honesty problem where I have to mention EVERY SINGLE BIT OF DETAIL on the guitars I sell so I'll have to mention the whole factory second neck to whoever wants to buy the guitar if it DOES turn out to be a factory second.

Excellent - well, some of us are learning stuff on this thread. Thank you.


On skunk stripe repairs, just for shucks here's some pics I found the other day of Dan Erlewine digging out the stripe on a Fender neck. Agonisingly, we're not shown the end of the story!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8903114@N0 ... 142318582/

Wow!


Seems to me, what you do on that is make yourself a very small waterslide decal that says "Rebuilt by Sami ___ 2009", which you put on the back of the headstock. It serves as an indication that you're not trying to trick anyone about the history of the instrument, and presuming you do a fabulous job also advertises your work. Conveniently, it also sits right beside that number "2" (whatever that's about) and kinda boasts; "I put this one right"...

There's a great pleasure in saving a wrecked instrument.

Cheers - C

Yeah that waterslide suggestion seems like a great idea. Which also gets me a lot more motivated to get it right to the smallest detail

Flickr is blocked here so I guess I'll have to look it up somewhere else..

Looks like I'm gonna have to sell some stuff to finance this project. I will have to fix the neck first though, cause if it's no good, then there's no point in investing a single extra penny in this.

As stupid as it may seem, but does anyone know where I can find those cheap water decals? That is, an ink/laser jet paper thing. And how susceptible are they to lacquer and solvents? Cause usually I don't change the headstock, on my rebuilds and for my customs I either stencil the logo or use the transparency method (found on projectguitar.com's tutorial page). It would definitely be much easier to use waterslide decals instead!

Hi Sami: I've used a brand called Lazertran which works fine on inkjet printers. Their literature suggested it might not be good with nitrocellulose, so when I was using that finish recently I did a little area above and below the decal with polyurethane to sandwich it in, and that worked well. No adverse reaction.

If you Google "waterslide decal paper inkjet" or "laser" you will get more results than you can shake a stick at. Here's a good example:

http://www.decalpaper.com/

You will notice they have one specifically for use on wood. Strangely, I don't think that's the one you want: you need to be able to apply decals to the smooth surface of a guitar finish and then spray more over the top.

(...And for anyone who's worried about it: this ain't a route to forging fake Fender decals. There's more to those things than Photoshop and decal paper. Fret not...)

Cheers - C

Thanks. I'll see if i can find the same brand here.

As for the neck. Things are getting a little more complicated than i thought. After sanding the back of the neck (the stripe and around it only, so the rest wouldn't be affected by steam) and steaming it a bit, the line where the stripe was coming off turned into this weird dark looking ooze (was brown/reddish) and it smelled horrible! What the hell is this thing? It definitely didn't look like wood glue! I took a picture to show how deep the ditch that goo left after cleaning 60% of its depth.

Here are some pictures, any help would be appreciated!!!


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002749.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002750.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002752.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002753.jpg

Now that IS interesting.

I'm wondering whether when the gap first appeared someone has filled it with a mixture of glue and sawdust from a dark colored wood? Who knows what kind of glue they might have used for that...

Or at any rate some sort of proprietary filler or putty.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Please keep us posted!

Cheers - C

OOOOOOKAY! DONE!

Here are some pics of the process:

After creating the first channel:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002758.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002756.jpg

Test fitting the rosewood strip:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002761.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002759.jpg

Gluing and clamping:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002762.jpg

Roughly cutting and scraping the first strip:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002768.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002767.jpg

The second channel and strip fitting were basically a repeated process. Here's the end result (of course, no finish yet and it's just roughly sanded and scraped):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002770.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v692/ ... 002773.jpg

Now, I have a fully working high quality American neck I have to sell a couple of guitars and do some extra repairs and customer mods so I can afford building the high quality strat to match! Will keep whoever is interestd posted!

Cheers guys,

Sami.

Very nice job.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Thanks mate!

Btw, being the Fender noob I am, I was wondering how much a standard American strat would cost here. So I passed by the dealer to satisfy my curiousity, and he lashed out a whopping 6k AED! An equivalent of $1650! WHAT IS THIS GUY THINKING? I mean if we were in Europe then fine, taxes are a b*** but in Dubai? TAXES ARE A MERE 5% AT MAX FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Made me wonder how much a Deluxe series would cost!

Btw, as for the one I'm going to be building once the cash is gathered, I was thinking a tobacco sunburst ash body with a nice quilted maple top, and a David Gilmour EMG set. What say you guys? This is a strat plus neck, hence I can't simply take it back to the 60's cause that would look VERY fake. It's gotta be something modern, you know?

SUGGESTIONS PLEASE

That's a good idea. A friend of mine did something similar:

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Hahaha that friend of yours even got the same bridge I was thinking of! But not the same pickups, Are the EMG singles any good? I've only dealt with their humbuckers and I like them for the more processed/extreme stuff. Would the singles do for more blues/classic rock kinda thing?

I'm much more determined on getting the same body as the one in the picture, now that I've seen an example!

Hi diSEMBOWELMENT: nice work indeed! Very neat channel cutting. Congrats.

Are you planning to stain the older walnut to match the strips you used for the repair, or leave it as it is, to show your work?

And yes, people are watching with interest, so please add photos of your body being built when you get round to it. Sounds great!

By the way, are you aware you can put your photos directly into posts here? Simply copy and paste the bottom line of code from beneath the picture in your Photobucket album. It's helpful if you resize the pictures to 600 pixels wide or less: it makes these pages easier to view. Like this:



Click the quote button on my post to see what I did.

Cheers - C

I don't know what single coils EMG offers now. Are you thinking about active pickups?

You could probably pick up some used American Standard pickups on ebay or some Tex-Mex or ... you have to figure out your budget.

When I put my doubleneck together, I used some vintage pickups that I had lying around, so I didn't have to buy any new ones. I guess the pickups are worth more than the rest of the guitar

_________________
Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.