Sunday 10 February 2013

ShonKy custom Strat No 3

 
 
 
I don't often do normal shape guitars or customs these days but here is my latest.
Strat style custom guitar with a unique finish created by applying several different layers of different coloured acrylic paint by dripping, splattering, spreading, throwing, painting etc. The paint is then rubbed down through the different layers to reveal random multicoloured patterns.


 
The guitar itself is all made from re-used parts apart from the electronic controls which are new but some of the wires are re-cycled from old stereos and tools. The Capacitor has been recycled from a defunct phone socket.
The body is a good full thickness lightweight alder. It came to me with a nasty crack through one of the neck socket screw holes. I took the damaged area on and bonded a piece of hardwood to replace it.


 
The neck is a very nice maple with maple fingerboard. Slim D profile with a fairly flat radius. It's quite wide (57mm at the heel) The neck came to me as an unused with a blank headstock. It was going to be used for another guitar but I changed my mind so it does have some filled holes in the headstock for different machine heads. I cut  a quite funky headstock shape reminiscent of some eastern block guitars that I can't quite think of.

 
It is fitted with a Blade type humbucker at the bridge and two ceramic single coils in the middle and neck. I think the neck one is from a squier. sound wise quite unique. The blade humbucker has that stratty honk but with a bit of p90 grit thrown in. Overdriven it growls like a rabid dog. the middle and neck deliver a good honest strat tone with a raw bluesy edge. I'm pretty sure the phone socket capacitor really gives this guitar it's sound as they are fairly generic pickups used on a multitude of guitars and I have never heard any that sound quite like this. If you open up a phone socket you will be surprised at the amount of capacitors you will find. I also gutted out a broken CD player the other day and It's chock full of them, great for experimenting with.

 
The other thing I have done on this guitar and the Cohiba 6 string cbg I finished recently was my own hand made nut. made from a piece of Sheet brass bonded to a thin slice of ebony. I like the Idea of a brass nut as the guitar saddles are metal. the frets are metal then the nut is usually not metal. Also no matter how stunning the guitar looks the nut is a fairly boring piece of white stuff so I thought i would experiment with making them a bit prettier. don't get me wrong this one is still a bit rough but They will get better. Works perfectly well though. when I have perfected them I might make them available for sale.
 
The guitar is now available for sale Here
 
If you like your strats then in the next couple of weeks I will have something very special for you.
 

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