to get the flat finish I am looking for it looks like I will need to go with the body form a highway one model. Which is fine. But every single HW1 body I see is bored for h/s/s and not s/s/s pups. Which is what I will be using.

Is there any problem with picking up the HSS body but puting in three singles instead?

if that is ok to do how (if at all) would this effect the sound?

No problem at all. FMIC have been doing it since the mid 80's. Both these guitars here that are HSH routed yet only have singlecoil sized pickups in.



and



Its a regular thing.

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No no and no

Thanks for the help. I feel I am getting closer to narrowing down my choices to get the perfect Strat for me.

another question if you don't mind.

are there differences in Fender Strat bodies?

meaning if I'm looking on Ebay and I find a used Fender MIA Strat body and it came from a HW1, or a Standard, or Deluxe or a what ever year RI, or vintage year....

are there going to be any major differences in the bodies? other then the routes?

The only body differences when buying used i can think of are the types of finish. Myself depending on what i want the particular guitar for that is a big factor. I've read a couple o weeks back about someone with a highway1 finish that had gone fragile (the only one i've heard of). That would be due to the nitrocellulose. My hotrods the same, fragile finish, the guitar is a oooh ahhh isnt it nice, play once a week affair. The two you see above are my polyurethane (sunburst) and bulletproof polyester (black) gigging guitars. I hear no difference between finish's at all, and i'm stupidly analytical of that stuff.

Oh another minimal difference is the contours. I believe the 57's bodies had deeper tummy cuts (something a FB like me needs). I do notice that on my 57hotrod compared to the other guitars.

Aside from having the cavities routed for what you want to put in it (the black body is the latest addition to my partsocaster and routed for the clapton midboost. Yes it sounds killer with that dimarzio fs2), and the colour.

Strats are pretty roomy inside. I really think the most important thing when choosing a body is colour.

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No no and no

Niki,

I'm off topic here, but when you said you hear no difference in finish are you refering to the two types of poly coats only or all three that you mentioned? I've always read that the nitro finishes "allow the guitar to resonate better" however I can't hear a discernable difference between finishes.

Russ

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'08 Amer. Dlx. Strat, '98 Amer. Std. Strat, '10 Squire CV Tele Custom, '96 Seagull S+6 Cedar
Deluxe Reverb RI, Tweed Blues Jr., Champion 110, Champion 600, Mustang I, Line 6 Vetta

Russ I hear no difference at all between all three. This goes into a long discussion on this forum about what doesnt and what does affect guitar tone and by how much. I even did the experiment and theres a video of it on youtube. Maple vs rosewood board. I kept everything as simple as possible. Guitar-lead-basic prehistoric amp-zoom h2 as a mic for my laptops video software. Both guitars had the same hardware and pickups but different fingerboards. As much as it galled me to admit it at the time, Slapchop was bang on the money. He'd argued the difference between fingerboards being negligable for ages before i did the experiment. He was righ the difference was so small a practice amp could eq it out.
Unfortunately i didnt record me listening for differences between the middle and neck scn's of my deluxe and hotrod. I couldnt hear any difference at all. The hotrods finish is so thin you can see the cellulose sinking into the wood grain.
Undoubtedly BigJay will chime in with some pertinent if slightly left field question but the basic crux of my philosophy on bodies/finishes and boards is that they do make some difference as a whole. But if you quantify as a percentage, the effect lacquer has i think it would be so small as to be valueless.

Lets keep lacquer for the purpose it was intended. To make things look pretty.

That vintage hotrod body resonates/vibrates like crazy. It doesnt change the basic sound of the guitar though.

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No no and no

To the OP, my HWY 1 was already routed for HSS and had SSS pups. It sounded good stock, but I wanted more umph. So I went from this:



to this:



My sound is different (hotter and fatter) now with the Humbucker, but that is what I wanted. The quality of the pickups has more to do with your tone than the SSS vs HSS route job, unless you have super hearing.

RK

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RK

2007 Fender Highway 1
2012 American Deluxe
2015 MIM Dave Murray HHH
2010 Fender Blacktop
1987 Fender Avalon Acoustic
2012 Marshall DSL 15 watt head

well I just picked up my Strat body yesterday for an amazing price! It just happened to be attatched to the rest of a brand new 09 Standard Strat in Frost red which is a very dark almost blood red color.

The reason I am sooooo happy about this color is because I was going to repaint a new body on the parts caster to a 2 color design. Which just hapens to be a black over red design! And this red is sooo dark it will give the design a perfect color combo for my design that I'm working on. I was either going to do a black over silver or black over red. So now I have the 2 colors set in stone.

Did I mention I got the entire guitar for less then what I would pay for a plain unfinished aftermarket strat body? So now I will play this thing for awhile while I take my time on design and get that all worked out.

by the way, she sounds beautifulllll!

will adding black over the blood red change the tone much?

Congrats.

I don't expect the "tone" will change ...

Please take pictures and post 'em as your project progresses! Please!
We all love that sort of stuff.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Shall do. I need to go to photobucket to start an account to get some before pix up