Just wondering if this would be a good project for me. I have zero experience assembling or disassembling Strats. Been playing for a very long time, but never got into the guts of an electric.
CL post follows:
http://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/msg/3225757897.html

What does to poster mean by "Basswood"?
That looks like a HSS format...??

Basswood is not a "hardwood".

It's a relatively featureless-grained soft lumber in the balsam family.

And Leo Fender never used it for guitar bodies.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Sorry, Arjay, but I have to disagree with you on this one.

http://northwesthardwoods.com/species-info/basswood/

Basswood

"Basswood trees grow in the hardwood growing regions of the northern United States to an average height of 65 feet. Basswood makes up less than 1% of the commercially available hardwoods in the United States. It grows fairly quickly and has exceptional longevity. Basswood’s sapwood is creamy white in color, while is heartwood is pale to reddish brown, sometimes with darker streaks. Its sapwood and heartwood are not always easily distinguishable.

Properties

This creamy white, lightweight hardwood is fine-grained with negligible grain pattern. Basswood machines well and is easy to work with hand tools. It is a natural choice for carving and turnery because it cuts easily both with and across the grain. Basswood also glues, nails, screws, and accepts stain well.

Commercial Uses

Basswood is often used to make keyboard pieces and musical instruments. It’s favored for shutters and blind slats, woodenware, matches, window sashes, picture frames, yardsticks and novelty items. Its light weight makes it especially suited for use in crates.

Other Uses

Native Americans once used the bark fibers of basswood to make fabric, thread, bandages and other binding materials. Adding to its many uses, the species is often called the boulevard tree and used in landscaping."

I always thought a deciduous tree was always a hardwood, regardless of how soft it is. Granted, basswood is a very soft wood, but I have used it for small items in my shop for years, sometimes even for drawer boxes with white oak runners. The trees make for excellent shade and I had several in my yard in Minnesota. They always dropped their leaves.

http://www.edroman.com/customshop/wood/basswood.htm

Leo might not have ever used it for guitars, but a LOT of other companies have and do.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/all-about-tonewoods/6502

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

Disagree to your heart's content.

Leo never used it and for damn good reason.

It's so friggin' soft you can dent it with a thumbnail.

Lesser companies use it because it is cheap and tooling blades used to cut body blanks last longer.

Period, end of story, nothing follows.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Poo on the basswood, I don't know how it got classified as a hardwood, look at it wrong it dings up. Although that article stated it was grown in hardwood regions, I'm sure so are many things. Anyway to the OP, it may be a good Practice project if thats what you think you want to do, you might even get a decent partscaster out of it. I wouldn't go buying a $200 piece of lumber for a first time project, so if you think you want to cut you teeth on something, go for it.

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"Where would rock and roll be without feedback?"

If you aren't experienced with assembling guitars, I seriously recommend buying parts which surely fit together!
When I started with that I made the mistake to buy cheap third party parts, ending up with parts which didn't fit.

That will lead to even more difficult work. Talk about NARROWING the neck pocket of a body which is just ONE of many problems you can run into (my first body had a 57mm neck pocket but my neck was 55mm!).

To learn about assembling/disassembling guitars including electrical work I would start off with cheap guitars of the same manufacturer first.

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Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

What follows isn't a defense of the ad -- that looks like a very low end thingy to me, and very risky without knowing the dimensions of the neck pocket, bridge, whether standard pickguards will fit, etc. It's just a mild defense of basswood/linden.

As said, it wasn't used for Strats during the Leo era (except maybe as a couple of oddball experiments). Also as said it's boring looking and usually used for solid finishes (or veneered, or foto-flamed).

But "hardwood" isn't the same thing as "a hard wood". Biologically speaking, a "hardwood" (one word) is defined as a flowering tree as opposed to non-flowering trees which are the softwood family. The hardest softwoods are harder than the softest hardwoods.

Balsa is part of the hardwood family even though it's one of the physically softest woods. Basswood/linden is part of the hardwood family -- it's just near the bottom of the hardness range of hardwoods. So in weasel-legal terms it's correct to call it a hardwood.

Basswood has a warm top end but very clear and defined bass and mids. For distorted stuff and effects it's outstanding. Cleans don't have much sparkle. Poly finishes significantly increase the dent resistance. It also pairs well tonally with maple caps (and other hard caps). It's usually light weight. Fender Japan used a lot of it in the '80s and '90s. Lots of companies have used it for higher-end instruments. It's not "traditional" but it's good sounding in its own way.

Warmoth does indeed make and sell basswood bodies (often with caps) -- Warmoth isn't really a "lesser" company and some people buy basswood because they like it. (The guitar in the ad doesn't have Warmoth's logo burned into the neck pocket and it doesn't look like Warmoth quality -- I'm just saying respectable companies do use basswood.)

Assembling or Disassembling these guitars is not just a nut and bolt Issue. You will need wood working skills, you will need to learn the scale and where, how and what are the measurements,
what is needed for various parts.

Some research is mandatory. Research in what is actually involved when bodies, necks and various parts do not fit because they are not Fender parts but copy parts.
I would start with a decent kit, but a used Squier Bullit or Affinity is a great guitar to learn some skills on how to build these things..Caveat....The Squier series have thinner bodies and thus measurements are not the same as a MIM and MIA spec Strat.
There are a few books which are absolutely critical to understanding what is involved.
Paul Balmer's books on the Stratocaster and the Telecaster are full of priceless info as to the various idiosincracies of various models.
There is a fairly recent book by Will Kelly " How to build electric guitars. It focuses on building a Strat, a Tele and a set neck Gibson LP Junior. But all of these are fairly straightforward as there is minimal woodworking involved ( which is not to infer that it's easy ).
I would highly recommend Martin Oakham's book " Build Your Own Electric Guitar " This is an in depth book with full size plans and complete instructions and a thorough review of required tools, the concepts behind a Stratocaster design....

One of the most important books I could recommend would be the Fender Custom Shop " The Dream Factory " . If you are going to build a Strat ( parts caster ) you absolutely need to understand where it came from or you'll just be trying to replicate a copy... I understand that building a Stratocaster to rival the custom shop is not your intent but You wouldn't ( shouldn't attempt to build a Shelby Cobra without a deep understanding of the car....
Same with a guitar, knowing where you're headed will save you vast amounts of head banging...

Search on this Forum, there are many build threads ( including mine ) many compiled on The Nutter's Build Thread compilation.....That should keep you busy in figuring out what you will need to start..

Good Luck....

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

I learned how to assemble Strats by getting a new Strat that I knew was assembled correctly, studied it and learned how to do all the setup adjustments on it. And when I had a basic understanding of how and why the parts went together the way they did, I started taking non-threatening parts off. The jack plate to see what was under there (and later to tighten the loose jack, and accidentally learn that the jack can be positioned incorrectly so that it hits the body and won't fit properly).

Then one string change I took off the pickguard and studied the way the pickups were mounted, how the controls were mounted, how the wires were connected. My EE dad taught me basic circuitry at a young, but you don't necessarily need to understand why things are hooked up the way they are. (That's when I learned that sometimes if the wires are bunched up in the wrong place after removing the pickguard, they'll get pinched and the guard won't sit flat on the face of the guitar.)

Then I carefully took the neck off paying close attention to how tight the screws were, figured out how the 3-bolt micro-tilt worked, and then put the neck back on and restrung it. (Later on I figured out why my neck shifted in the pocket so easliy and came up with a cure.)

Eventually I started modifying it and customizing it. Learned how to make a string nut, fit it, cut the slots (it worked but was a little ugly -- it was a learning experience and now my nuts are outstanding. Changed pickups and learned about phase issues. Changed the tuners (fashionable back in the early '80s) and learned how to fix a mounting screw when it breaks, and figure out what I had done wrong with the pilot hole to cause it to break.

After that I had no problem assembling a partsocaster from pieces that I knew fit together. And when I started risking parts that might not fit together I was grounded in the basics and could focus on the odd problems.

+1

An eminently practical method of learning the craft of how to a properly assemble a Strat.

Rawk on!



Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Hi guys. Just to be utterly anal about it, the absolute and only categorical distinction between "hardwoods" and "softwoods" is a biological one related to how they form seeds: hardwoods are angiosperm trees and softwoods are gymnosperm. Angiosperms contain their seeds within an ovary, whereas gymnosperms have "naked" seeds (such as in a pine cone).

Any other way of thinking about it has us tripping over exceptions, the most obvious being that many hardwoods have rather soft timber (poplar, balsa, etc) and some softwoods have very hard timber (cedar, yew). Some hardwoods can be evergreen (holly), whereas some softwoods drop their needles in winter (larch). Tropical hardwoods are usually not deciduous. Many softwoods bear their seeds in cones, but some have berries (yew). There can be differences in the pore structures in the timber, but it can be difficult to be categorical.

In other words, none of the conventional ways of identifying softwoods and hardwoods really hold up.

As we know, we tend to favour "hardwoods" for instrument building (mahogany, maple, cherry) - except for the bits where we want softwoods, for instance spruce for acoustic and archtop guitar fronts and the front plates of violins and cellos. Spruce is a pretty soft timber - but sometimes we use cedar for guitar fronts instead, and that's hard. And for that matter, I was just working with a violin maker who sometimes builds cello and even violin backs and necks from poplar, which is as different from the usual maple as you could imagine.

There's no rules. It's all so horribly confusing...

Cheers - C

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