First Build Diary FS1

My starcaster FS1 kit arrive very quickly, Thanks for that PitBull. Time to get creative:

Examining the pots and electrical components, I decided to replace everything. Research showed the old starcaster had split pole 3x3 Humbucker “wide range” pickups made with cunife magnets. Fender is selling these again at about 200$ each. I bought a close approximation with alnico 5 magnets from dragonfire.com. Bought locking tuners from dragonfire as well.

A semi hollow like this should have a Bigsby or similar so I ordered the XTrem and roller bridge from guitarfetish.com.

I wanted the capability to split the coils in the pickups (4 wire dragonfire) so I ordered the Jimmy Page kit with 4 push-pull pots the enable: individual coils splitting, series,parallel,options and phase options. Go big or go,home!

Color: The top is a beautiful figured maple, so I think I’m going with a black stain and all black hardware and hopefully have a contrast with the natural light wood color. I had some maple with some curl in it left over from a scratch build so I resawed 4 pieces, sanded them to 220 and stained 3 and painted one with varying shades of black and grey. I plan to sand and topcoat all and perhaps do the reverse on the obverse sides, (clear coat, sand and stain, ) just to see what happens.