Best buy?

Further to my last post, I was thinking of the best cheap guitar I ever bought. 

It was a Squier Stratocaster. It was love at first sight.  It was glossy black with a beautiful pearloid pick guard.  There was a worn spot where your forearm contacted the guitar.  The frets were in great shape, and the string action was nice and low. The maple neck was a vintage butterscotch tone, and it had the smaller, more attractive headstock with the spaghetti Fender logo.

But beyond all of this physical beauty was how it felt. Sure, it sounded good too, but I have never felt a guitar that felt so good in my hand in the business area, between the fifth and tenth fret.  It felt like it was made for my hand.  It was like when my dad taught me how to break in a baseball glove. Both cases, glove and guitar neck, felt like buttah.

I got it for a song, hunting around on Craigslist.  I had been on the hunt for a bit.  I'd played a few Squier Strats in stores, but was not impressed by the workmanship of the Affinity line especially.  They had flimsy components and sharp frets that hung out past the fretboards. But the gem I bought had no such issues. 

And where is this beauty now?  Well, that's the thing.  It was never meant to be mine in the first place.  I was looking for a nice gift for my brother in-law's fortieth birthday, and I came across this treasure. Okay, I admit that it crossed my mind to go find a different one for Kevin because I liked that one so much, but I knew that as a player he would really appreciate such a sweet guitar.  And he did. 

It turned out to be the perfect gift for him.  As added bonuses, I got to go hunting, and I do get to visit the little prize every so often.

Why buy cheap guitars?

Tight wad. I love playing the guitar, but people are amazed that I don't buy expensive guitars. My friends who golf or play hockey as their hobbies always buy the best equipment they can afford, and sometimes beyond what they can afford.  They justify the expense because they say the high priced equipment brings out the best in their performance.

 

But I know myself too well. 

 

When I start any new hobby that involves buying something, I tend to buy cheap to medium priced gear.  I never know if something is going to stick with me because I am interested in lots of things.  In the last five years, I have been interested in: classroom technology, design and architecture, knitting, home exercise, fountain pens, Steampunk watches, Hermes citrus fragrance, woodwork, yoga, slow cookers, pressure cookers, economics, jogging, and cycling (I just have to buy a bike). 

My friends also justify the initial outlay of cash because they can always sell their quality equipment later.  Resale is not big with me because I don't want the hassle of trying to get a few bucks once the interest is dropped.

 

But here is my favourite reason for buying inexpensive guitars: modding.  I am a huge tinkerer, so buying something that is perfect is not as interesting to me as getting something I can mess about with.

 

Take my number one workhorse guitar.  It was a  $240 Mexican made Fender Stratocaster.  Then I:
1. Changed the neck to a maple one.
2. Put on better tuners and got rid of the string tree.
3. Shaved down the screws on the bridge.
4. Put on a humbucker on the bridge position.
5. Rewired the tone control to make it control the bridge pickup.
6. Put in a mini switch so the humbucker could be a single coil too.
7. Removed the trem cover and floated the trem.
8. Put in different saddles.
9. Put the string tree back on.
10. Replaced the jack.
11. Reseated a couple of high frets.
12. Cranked the trem back down.

 

Would I have had to do all of this if I had bought a new Strat?  Yes and no.  Yes because some of these things were because the original parts were worn or just plain crappy.  But no because some of these mods came from the evolution of my playing and my tastes. For example, for modern heavier songs, I needed the growl of the humbucker, but I missed the clarity of the single, so having the switch gave me both.  There aren't many Strats fresh off the shelf that can do this.  I raised the trem to be like Jeff Beck, but when I realized that I am a mere mortal, I lowered it back down.  I was able to make all of these mods along the way as my preferences dictated.

 

I don't think I would have done all of these changes with a new expensive guitar.  With a cheaper instrument, I wouldn't be as worried making these changes or if I totally botched the job.  Leo Fender was a genius.  He designed this guitar with modification a true possibility.  This is not as true with other guitars.  The Strat is like a Hot Rod in that sense in that you can find a myriad of parts available to suit your particular needs. 

 

There is also the process.  If I bought a perfect guitar I would be denying myself all the fun of tinkering which includes doing the actual mods, the purchasing of the parts, but also the research of the how, the what, the why, and the where.  Ask my wife and she will tell you I spend more time thinking and reading about guitars than I do playing one.

Are cheap guitars better than expensive ones?  Probably not, but for frugal tinkerers like me, they can be a lot more fun.   

Fretting Out

On my workhorse guitar, a 1994 Mexican Stratocaster, I would fret out after the 19th fret, essentially making it a 20 fret guitar.  I don't often play that high, but the times I would, it would be embarrassing always being flat trying to get that C# or even the high C sometimes. 

It started when I replaced the neck on my skinny fret 1994 Squier Series guitar with a 2008 neck I bought on Ebay.  I don't really know what I'm doing when I am making any of these mods to my guitars, but I like the pursuit of tinkering.  Anyway, I unbolted the old neck and slapped on the new one. The frets felt immediately better, and I loved the look, sound, and feel of the maple fret board (the old one was rosewood).  But somewhere down the line, it started fretting out on the high fret on the high E string only.

I tried all sorts of things, including raising the action of just the E string, but it felt weird and I lost a noticeable amount of volume.  I read that my hero, Jeff Beck, had his trem set pretty high so he could get his trademark flutter sound up and down in pitch.  When I did that, my guitar no longer fretted out.  Problem solved.

Well, for a while. 

With Beck's set up, I perceived a loss of sustain and richness in the sound (though Jeff does not share this problem with me).  The action also felt weird.  I started thinking of buying another guitar just to get around this, but my attachment to this guitar, and my attachment to a pile of money stopped me from doing that.  I lowered the action, I lowered the trem, and mostly, I lowered my expectations of ever playing on the high frets on this guitar.

Then, last week, looking for something else, I came across on a newsgroup someone who had a similar fretting out problem.  He took it to his tech who diagnosed that the culprit was an unseated fret.  The tech took out his fret block and his custom hammer and gently tapped the fret back into place.

Inspired, I took the guitar to my tech (me), who took out his fret block (a chunk of wood that fell off the cabinet he made) and his custom hammer (a rock - God knows why this was lying on the floor of the den), and smacked the fret into place with a couple of whacks.  Ooops, there was now a groove in the fret.  My tech draped a rag over the pickups so no filings would stick to the magnets, and gave the fret a polish with some steel wool.

And waddaya know? No fretting out!  The C# sounds like it should and I can also bend up to D.


(Okay, there is a small chance that it was the steel wool, not the fret tapping that cured this problem, but without a time machine, I'll never know.  But who cares?  I can play high C#!)