Kinda NGD... Finally got my Shell Pink Strat!

It's not a new guitar, nor is it new to me. I built in 2018, turned it into a thinline in 2019, and refinished it in 2020. This guitar and I have been through a lot in a short few years, but it's pink now and I love it. I've been digging the idea of a shell pink Strat for a long time but it was always hard to pull the trigger. No regrets.

 

I got around to getting it set up and it's playing pretty good. Still a fair amount of work to be done on the nut. Sharp corners and such.

 

Thanks a lot! Yeah I had intentions to do something else in the middle where the two holes are. I drilled the holes just to hog out some material before I cut out the final shape on the scroll saw. But after I got the two larger sections cut out I liked it the way it was.

 

There's a story sure. Maybe a scary one depending on who you ask. So back in 2018 I built 3 Strats. I had enough Alder to do one, and I built the other 2 out of ash. Not swamp ash but regular ol' baseball bat ash. This was number 2 and it was heavy and sounded dead so I didn't finish the 3rd one. One day I got a hare brained idea to plane down body number 3, hollow it out and glue on a new top. That worked out really well and I got a really cool thinline Strat out of a body I had written off.




So after that success I decided to do this one too. I took it apart and found a piece of double stick tape under the bridge. Remember how I said it sounded dead? Pretty sure that was it. I must have been using that tape to line up the bridge when I drilled the holes. And then I forgot to remove the tape. So that was likely the cause of what started this whole thing of hollowing out existing guitars. I'm not certain because I was to lazy to put the bridge back on without the tape, string it up and "prove" that the dead sound was gone. But I have a Walnut Tele that's just as heavy and it rings great, so the weight was probably never the issue. Im glad I did both though. Much lighter.

 

Not sure about that. I've never been a huge fan of matching headstock. Especially on a Strat. A jaguar or jazzmaster maybe!