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?).