'90 JP-90 in Cherry Flamenco, Another Wudtone project

 My second Wudtone project was to refinish my JP-90 Bass with Cherry Flamenco. This took a long time as every coat has to cure for at least one day and you need about 15 coats (multiple layers of deep color, 2nd base coat, 3rd base coat and top coat).

While at it I changed the wiring as well. From Volume-Tone to each pick-up having its own volume. This makes more sense as you can get an in-between sound by mixing the bridge pickup for attack and neck pickup for bottom.

Here is a close-up picture showing what the finish looks like.

Next Generation

My son Luka is now 10 years old, so it is time for him to start playing guitar. Luka is left handed, so he can't play my guitars (not a bad thing if you think about it). But how to find a guitar for a leftie? Luckily in Houston there is a guitar store that is dedicated to lefties and they have hundreds of left handed guitars to choose from. I bought the cheapest, which is Jay Turser Strato copy. Good already beaten up starter guitar and Luka has to earn better guitars by learning to play.

Luka did not like the white pickguard, so we covered it with carbon fiber imitation vinyl and changed the knobs to shiny ones.

I have been thinking of building a 'Roadrunner' Stratocaster. The original has a '69 Stratocaster body attached to '71 Telecaster neck. An original '71 Tele neck costs easily close to $1,000 so I tested if I can build an imitation from a $35 Chinese neck by refinishing with vintage laquer and attaching proper decal. Here it is, only missing the 'bullet' truss rod nut. As you can see, the strings are in opposite order,which is because it is at this moment attached to a Jackson body and works as Luka's other guitar. 

And just in case 6 strings are too many for Luka to handle, I got him this Precision bass. First my daughter painted the body to look like steam punk. However, I later thought that instead I would refinish the body with the Wudtone leftovers. I tried to remove the paint with a heat gun, but the paint just start bubbling. It actually looked good, like if it had burned (kind of like Hendrix Hotel Astoria Stratocaster), so I left it as is. Note, this is a $50 imitation, not an original Fender. But it plays very well indeed and is much lighter than original (Ikea wood body?).

Adding Micro-tilt to Powerhouse-Clapton

"WHAT IS A MICRO TILT ?" 

Well, Here is a Quote Straight from Fender 

"Micro-Tilt neck adjustment." 

"This is a feature originally introduced in the early 1970s as an easy means of adjusting the angle of the neck in relation to the instrument body. Micro-Tilt is a simple leverage mechanism. Through a small hole in the neck plate, a small Allen screw can be used to increase neck angle. Tightening the screw makes it protrude beyond the surface of the neck pocket, pushing on a metal plate mounted on the bottom of the neck heel and thus slightly increasing the neck angle." 

I obtained a Made in USA neck for this project. The good news is that it has already a steel disk for the Micro-tilt.

I also had a neck plate from an early 90's American Stratocaster, which has the adjustment hole. 

Using the adjustment hole as a guide I drilled a hole through the body. I widened the hole a bit in the other end. I then installed the micro-tilt device by tapping it gently with a hammer so no damage was caused . In the middle you can see the screw that pops up to tilt the neck.

 The plate was still 2 mm off the wood surface. So I used a clamp to press it in the wood. The neck plate was used on the other side to distribute the force in wider area.

Here is the result.

 This is the way to use Micro-tilt.

Powerhouse Clapton almost ready to go. However,I still need to change the tremolo. Powerhouse requires the vintage 6-screw tremolo with 2-7/32 spacing and big block instead of the 2-1/16 spaced small block tremolo it has at this moment.  

And here is an example from Youtube how Lace Sensors with mid-boost sound like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB357PgcYsc

Removing paint from guitar body

It is time to refinish the JP-90 bass, so the old finish needs to be removed. With this type of paint/primer all you need is a heat gun and scraper and both top coat and the primer comes off as easily as seen in attached pictures. Just some burn marks were left to be sanded. You can avoid burn marks by using less heat and more patience than I did.

Fender has used different types of paint, so it is not always this easy. For example with my Stratocaster just the top coat came off with heat gun and I had to sand down the primer.   

Clapton Powerhouse

Stratocaster Powerhouse has a mid-boost, thus it has a routing for the circuit board. I got a bare body from eBay as well as a set of Gold Lace Sensors. Those combined with Clapton mid-boost gives me the electronics of the 90s Clapton Stratocaster. Clapton Stratocaster does not have a battery compartment (battery is next to tremolo springs), so I think this is even better than the original. Rest of this guitar are just random Stratocaster parts I had lying around.   

Routing for Clapton Mid-boost in front of the Powerhouse Strat

Battery compartment in the back of the body

Wudtone Finishing Kit

Hot Amber finish on my -97

I decided to refinish my -97 American Standard with Wudtone Finishing Kit.

Here is the process:

Remove the top coat with heat gun. On attached picture you can see how the reomoved paint looks like.

Paint chips 

Sanded rest of the paint and primer

Wudtone Finishing Kit comes in 3 small bottles: Deep Coat, Base Coat and Top Coat

Here is the body after Deep Coat has been added

Here is the body after 3 layers of Deep Coat, 6 layers of Base Coat and 5 layers of Top Coat

Fake 'Made in USA' Strats

Just noticed that there is yet another fake 'Made in USA' 2006 Fender Stratocaster on eBay. It is easy to tell it's a fake, because the hole made for truss rod does not have the walnut plug. The picture on the left is the fake guitar and the picture on the right is a real 2006 American Stratocaster. 

The fakes can be divided in two categories: factory made fakes and home made fakes. Factory made fakes come out of factory carrying 'Made in USA' label as well as a 'real' serial number. Home made fakes are originally Squiers or Fenders from Mexico or Korea. Seems like our fake is factory made. Picture on the right is a real serial number: first two digits (Z6) are slightly different font than the last six digits. Picture on the left is our fake with bigger Z and all seven digits the same font. The font size on fake is bigger than on the real one.     

Fake

Real

Here is a home made fake. The truss rod hole plug is made of plastic. This indicates that this guitar was made in Mexico or Korea. If there is no plug it can be a Squier.