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Adventures in guitar surgery

Adventures In Guitar Surgery

Welcome to my first Guitar.com blog since...well...a long time ago. I'm here today to talk about my weekend adventures in Stratocaster modification. At times it was harrowing, other times exciting, and still other times it was downright scary, but the experience and the end result made it all worth it.

Before:

So, as you can see here, we have a perfectly normal Fender HSS Stratocaster that was made in Mexico back in 2006. The closest thing to a "bell" or a "whistle" on this guitar would be the stock Fender humbucker, which isn't that hot and will be replaced during my next round of mods.
This came equipped with the not-so-fabulous "vintage style" six point tremolo, which, as most guitarists know, doesn't stay in tune worth a damn when you use it. Overall, this is a solid guitar, but like everything, it has its flaws. So, using some instructions from this site, parts from this site, a bunch of tools, and a quite a bit of good luck, I set out to remedy one of said flaws with a Floyd Rose double locking system. This was the result.

After:

In Conclusion:

Quite honestly, I'm a bit surprised it turned out as well as it did. It's not perfect, by any means, but it came out pretty impressively for my first attempt ever at installing a Floyd. Clearly, modifications were necessary, for example, cutting the away the wood behind the original nut to make a "shelf" for the locking nut to sit on.

Most people recommend using a router bit with a ball bearing to ensure that you're cutting a straight line along the back edge of the fretboard, but we didn't have one of these bits available. So, throwing caution to the wind, we broke out the trusty old radial arm saw, lined the neck up on the work table very carefully, and cut the shit out of it. Luck was on our side on that one, and stayed with us as we drilled the holes for the bushings for the pivot screws down on the bridge side, as we drilled in the perfect spot on our first attempt. I hear that some people haven't been that lucky and have fucked up some perfectly good guitars. Hmm....perfectly good guitar...John Hiatt. Wowee.

Once the nut and bridge were mounted, (and the pickguard was quite shittily cut to accommodate the bridge) I discovered a problem I hadn't forseen. The block on the bottom of the bridge was apparently longer on the stock Fender trem than the one on the generic Floyd I was installing. This caused the springs to pretty much sit on the wood and make horrible noises when you gave the whammy a good dive. So, the strings and bridge had to come off again, and I went to work on the spring cavity with a wood chisel. Yes, a chisel.
After much chiseling and hand cramping, I re-mounted the bridge and springs, then restrung the guitar with some Ernie Ball Power Slinkies, Gauges 11-14-18p-28-38-48, and discovered I had the spring clearance I needed. I won't bore you with the intonation and tuning, as I don't like to even think about it now that it's done.

There's still a lot to be done with this guitar. I'm sure you noticed the big ass hole in the headstock where the string tree used to reside. I'm either going to fill that with a toothpick or something, or maybe just put the string tree back on it, I don't know yet. The chrome tuners need to go as well, they look like shit next to the black string retainer and nut. Pickups need replacing as well. I guess that'll be material for the next episode.

Over and Out
Gardiner.

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