My first build - STA-1 custom

Hi to all who browse ,
Thought I would have a go at my first build after stalking the page for a year or two
Not aiming for perfection being my first go at a build but thought i could share my experience and thoughts on the process , I am already 4-5 weeks into my build so i will spread this out over a few posts

So first step I ordered a STA-1 guitar but decided I wanted to go down the super strat route thus got a custom order with only 2 humbucker routes and also routing for a Floyd Rose trem , the guys quoted me about 6 weeks for delivery and it turned up in 5 = me stoked

Hi Omad welcome to the forum and a cool kit to start on !
Interesting super strat build look forward to seeing the progress !!

Good luck with the build and ask any questions you have in your build diary

Welcome Omad (or is it Damo?).

next step headstock design eventually settled on a combo of 2 of the designs I came up with, still fairly traditional in terms of strat design with a enough variation to make it feel like i had come up with something I hadn't seen beforeAttachment 13767

so the next thing i did was routing a channel and drilling a hole for a 3 way toggle on the lower horn, my plan was to be able to use this guitar for playing Rage Against The Machine songs at an annual 90's music tribute night I've been involved in the last few years. My dilemma here was how to drill out the hole for the switch with out going right the way thru the body, after a bit of internet searching found out about forstner drill bits and it made light work of the job leaving a very clean hole, then borrowed a router from work to dig out the wiring channel and she was ready to move onto sanding and finishing the body

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thanks mate yeah it is Damo , username was gone so reverted to my alternate when that is the case

Next step was sanding and raising the grain as its an Ash body so I followed the tried and true method I found online of sand with 240 grit, wipe with wet cloth and repeat until the grain stops lifting, this took about 4 process repeats spread over 4 days until I was happy

Next I applied grain filler, I went for an ebony colour as i planned to dark stain the guitar with a walnut stain and wanted the grain to really show through ,I let it dry for 24hours then began sanding with 320 grit, I put it on a bit thick so it took a bit of sanding but once I'd finished I was pretty happy, it looked and felt pretty well filled and I decided to risk it and move onto the next step of staining the wood

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So I used Brown Walnut Colourwood interior stain from bunnings , I have actually already used this before on a re-housed amp head and I liked the colour as it had a bit of a red tinge to it and I already had a tin of it so thought lets give it a go and it came up looking really good i think

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nice work so far Damo, so with the switch in the lower horn what controls will you have in the usual area just 1 volume and 1 tone ?

EDIT just saw the stain looks great !

One thing I found out after I stained it was that if I wanted it 100% smooth I should have had a second go at grain filling or applied a sanding sealer but I ended up really liking the look and feel of the little bit of texture the ash grain gave it and as I was not going to be doing a gloss finish instead opting for a satin finish I moved onto the lacquer stage
As i haven't any experience with spray guns I opted for the spray can variety, I bought a can of the Behlen jet spray clear nitro satin from guitaraust.com.au
Its pretty cool this time of year in Canberra so I had to wait for a warmish day to start spraying but started off with 3 x light coats on the first day with a couple of hours drying in between each coat, i have a small music studio in my garage which provided a nice place to keep it safe from the elements and dust for drying. the next coats I did only one a day as I was limited by time and temperature and so by the end of this process I have applied 6 coats all up to the body and 5 to the neck (which i forgot to mention I had also stained but as it was maple I had to stain it twice to get the darkness to match better the ash body).
So I am now about a week away from assembly as I await the nitro some more time to cure thus I will chime back in with an update next week and hopefully an assembled guitar!

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nice job Damo, the satin clear looks great. You must be stoked with the colour

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

nice work so far Damo, so with the switch in the lower horn what controls will you have in the usual area just 1 volume and 1 tone ?

EDIT just saw the stain looks great !

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Thanks mate , so for the controls I have gone with 2 volumes so I can turn off a pickup and use the 3 way switch for the Tom Morrello tricks, and 1 tone which is also a push\pull pot, setup to split the coils of both of the pickups for a bit of enhanced tone tweaking, the volumes are CTS 500k audio taper and the tone push\pull is a Bourns 500k Audio taper.The 3-way toggle and input jack are both switchcraft. I had to get a blank strat scratch plate it was shaped on the outside edge but I had to cut out the holes for the humbuckers, vol/tone pots and also widen the back of it to fit the Floyd Rose.

I am using 2 pickups I already had in my collection of stuff , the bridge is a Seymour Duncan Custom 5 (basically a hotrodded PAF) and the neck is a Gibson Tony Iommi Signature pickup, I've also installed a Mallory mustard capacitor .uf22 on the tone pot after watching a really good tone cap comparison video on the youtube and because i have an orange drop on another guitar so thought I would try something different

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

nice job Damo, the satin clear looks great. You must be stoked with the colour

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Yeah really happy with it, saw a few dark stains on here recently and was hoping once I applied it, it would retain some of the reddish that it had shown when I had used it before and it seems to of stayed true to that on the ash even after using the dark coloured wood filler

sounds awesome Damo, you have done your research on the electronic upgrades. I am also a huge RATM fan and love Tom Morrello's playing, he is so unique with his sound and has some very cool techniques. Can't wait to hear a demo of you doing some cool Tom Morrello tunes !

here is a look at the scratch plate I wired it up last night , took 4 goes at 4 different schematics for me to get it right , I've attached the one that actually worked for me, the 3-Way toggle in this one matches the one I have installed, and once I realized that, I looked back at the other ones and realized were actually right, just the design of the actual 3-Way was different and my male eye for detail missed that thus I had the earth and signal from the tone pots the wrong way around, also one of the schematics I had been looking at had the signal lead and the capacitor on the tone pot swapped so it was working backwards but once I followed this schematic everything worked as I had hoped it would
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nice job of the wiring Damo. You won't get the output jack through to the jack cavity

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

nice job of the wiring Damo. You won't get the output jack through to the jack cavity

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:confused: what do ya mean ? nah yeah just used it for testing ;)

Hey Damo, meaning you will have to unsolder the jack tips to fit the wires through to the jack cavity and re-solder them to the jack.

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Hey Damo, meaning you will have to unsolder the jack tips to fit the wires through to the jack cavity and re-solder them to the jack.

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I was just being silly with that confused comment ;) I just wired it up to test it out, I held the pickguard over one of my other guitars and strummed its strings to ensure all the components were working as they should

haha no worries Damo all good mate.
What is your favourite RATM song ?

Nice work damo, lookin great and a killer kit!

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

What is your favourite RATM song ?

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Oooo, that is a question for the ages....so many good options....

No shelter? Bomb track? Killing in the name? Ghost of Tom Joad? Wake Up? Bulls On Parade? How do you choose?

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

Oooo, that is a question for the ages....so many good options....

No shelter? Bomb track? Killing in the name? Ghost of Tom Joad? Wake Up? Bulls On Parade? How do you choose?

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Just like Doritos you can't pick just one , but the whole first album is pretty much flawless IMO

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life got in the way here is a couple of pics of the completed guitar

wow Damo that has turned out really nice. Think you might be the first to put a floyd tremelo onto a strat kit.
How does it sound and play ? did you do all the routes for the floyd cavity and did the mods for the lock nut ?

Woks, it was a custom order for a 2 x humbucker + FR routed body. See the first post in the thread. http://www.buildyourownguitar.com.au...l=1#post116906

Those pieces of ash have come out really well, no mixture of light and dark pieces and with an interesting pattern. Well done Damo!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

wow Damo that has turned out really nice. Think you might be the first to put a floyd tremelo onto a strat kit.
How does it sound and play ? did you do all the routes for the floyd cavity and did the mods for the lock nut ?

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As has been pointed out nah i ordered it with the routes for the humbuckers and floyd but i did the route for the pickup switch myself
It plays really well but I am having some trouble getting the floyd to balance prperly , it doesnt always return to perfect tune and my mate who is a longtime floyd player had a go at it and we think it just comes down to the quality of the chinease floyd, so will probably soon fork out for an upgrade to a higher quality gotoh one , but all in all really happy with the guitar

no worries Damo, have you played around with the trem springs to try and get the Floyd to return to a flat position ?

There's are a few things you can check to see if they are preventing the trem from returning to pitch:


* Check to see if the bridge is rubbing against any part of the bridge route.

* Check to see if the locking nut is moving about when you use the trem bar, ideally it should not move at all once the string-locks have been tightened up.

* Check to see if the knife-edges of the bridge, and the notches in the pivot posts are worn, you can smear a small amount of Lip Ease in the notches of the pivot posts, this will help to lubricate the two pivot points.


If you're after a quality replacement for the bridge, you could check out the Schaller Lockmeister that Realtone Music sell, I've got one on a Hot Rod Strat that I built last year and it's a pretty good quality bit of hardware, and it's basically a drop-in replacement for the one you have installed on the guitar.



http://www.realparts.com.au/floyd-ro...lo-chrome.html