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The Death Kitty!
I was looking for a cheap guitar to have as a "carry around" guitar that I wouldn't care if it got smacked around or abused. I was playing the cheapies at my local store and saw a single hum strat hardtail that I thought, hey this would make a funny project guitar. It actually surprised me how well it played and sounded acoustically for the price.
I thought back to an old video I saw of RD and thought, "this could actually rock!"
Seeing other people's project guitars kind of made me want to have some kind of project to work on, plus i needed a home for a SD "P-rails Hot" that I was dying to try. So anyways, the first step was to install some Sperzel locking tuners and Schaller strap locks. The stock tuners were godawful as can be expected on a $150 electric guitar and they would go out of tune on a simple breeze, never mind a full step bend. I decided to leave the string trees on even though the Sperzels have the graduated heights. Lessons learned during the installation of the Sperzels include;
1. Measure everything properly and check the measurements. I was off on the placement of my mark for the low E locating pin. It's a bit crooked compared to the other tuning machine heads.
2. Do not drill the guide holes with the guitar held between your legs using a hand drill. Obviously this also contributed to the crooked low E tuner.
3. Do not do things in a rush. Again this is related to the holding the guitar between the legs rather than doing the drilling on the workbench.
4. Use the right tool for the job. As you can see the nuts are a little rough because I installed them with cheap pliers instead of a proper wrench.
All that said, I can live with it. This guitar is meant to be functional, not really pretty.
The guitar now holds tune better than my RR1.
I had to wait around 3 months for the P-Rails Hot to come in because I had to order it in white to match the pickguard and SD and/or the Canadian distributor apparently had none in stock. The guitar sat assembled and was being used while waiting for the pick up to come in. My vision for the guitar was to surround Hello Kitty with items not usually associated such as skulls and zombie faces.
I decided to try my first time ever painting anything but airplane and tank models and after mocking things up in photoshop I went with a bullseye paintjob. (Sorry, I was lazy and didn't take step by step pics.) So I disassembled the guitar and masked the body up with 2" masking tape strips. I then went to a hobby store and bought an 18" ruler and drilled a hole every inch. I put a screw through the base hole and used a pen through each hole in order to mark the mask. I used an x-acto knife to cut out the mask and then took the body to my buddies shop and did the painting with a Krylon gloss black rattle can. The paintjob for me was the thing I actually cared the least about. I knew I would make mistakes and I did make plenty. I learned the most in this stage though.
Anyways, I am terrible with cutting curved line in masks apparently. I also cut far too deep in several places causing the factory gelcoat paint/clear to fracture around the cuts. The work is SERIOUSLY amateur, but somehow for me it adds to the charm. It turned out probably better than I had thought it would. If I wasn't impatient I could actually be capable of doing a good job at it I think. I actually really like how it turned out. I haven't cleared over the black so there are some good ridges where the mask ended. Here is a closer up pic on the body, the strap, the new volume knob, and the 3 way switch I installed for the P-Rails.
The 3 way works like this - Up = rail single coil, Middle = Humbucker, Down = P90 coil.
The P-Rails hot is a very nice pickup. The single is almost more Tele sounding than Strat and the P90 is super warm sounding. I was expecting a little more aggression in P90 mode to be honest. As a straight humbucker this thing absolutely kills. It's kind of a sick love child of a JB's high definition combined with a 59 or Custom bottom. I really found out though that I should have shielded the cavities on this thing before re-assembling. The factory shielding "paint" (It looks like they just rubbed charcoal in the cavity to be honest.) does not shield bugger all. Since the coils are unbalanced it's difinitely a little more prone to noise than a standard humbucker. I'm going to order a shielding kit from stewmac eventually and install it to lower the noise.
Here is the last picture of the whole guitar. I think there will probably be more project guitars in my future. I'll try not to slam you with a Blazer style thread every time I build one though.
I was looking for a cheap guitar to have as a "carry around" guitar that I wouldn't care if it got smacked around or abused. I was playing the cheapies at my local store and saw a single hum strat hardtail that I thought, hey this would make a funny project guitar. It actually surprised me how well it played and sounded acoustically for the price.
I thought back to an old video I saw of RD and thought, "this could actually rock!"
Seeing other people's project guitars kind of made me want to have some kind of project to work on, plus i needed a home for a SD "P-rails Hot" that I was dying to try. So anyways, the first step was to install some Sperzel locking tuners and Schaller strap locks. The stock tuners were godawful as can be expected on a $150 electric guitar and they would go out of tune on a simple breeze, never mind a full step bend. I decided to leave the string trees on even though the Sperzels have the graduated heights. Lessons learned during the installation of the Sperzels include;
1. Measure everything properly and check the measurements. I was off on the placement of my mark for the low E locating pin. It's a bit crooked compared to the other tuning machine heads.
2. Do not drill the guide holes with the guitar held between your legs using a hand drill. Obviously this also contributed to the crooked low E tuner.
3. Do not do things in a rush. Again this is related to the holding the guitar between the legs rather than doing the drilling on the workbench.
4. Use the right tool for the job. As you can see the nuts are a little rough because I installed them with cheap pliers instead of a proper wrench.
All that said, I can live with it. This guitar is meant to be functional, not really pretty.
The guitar now holds tune better than my RR1. I had to wait around 3 months for the P-Rails Hot to come in because I had to order it in white to match the pickguard and SD and/or the Canadian distributor apparently had none in stock. The guitar sat assembled and was being used while waiting for the pick up to come in. My vision for the guitar was to surround Hello Kitty with items not usually associated such as skulls and zombie faces.
I decided to try my first time ever painting anything but airplane and tank models and after mocking things up in photoshop I went with a bullseye paintjob. (Sorry, I was lazy and didn't take step by step pics.) So I disassembled the guitar and masked the body up with 2" masking tape strips. I then went to a hobby store and bought an 18" ruler and drilled a hole every inch. I put a screw through the base hole and used a pen through each hole in order to mark the mask. I used an x-acto knife to cut out the mask and then took the body to my buddies shop and did the painting with a Krylon gloss black rattle can. The paintjob for me was the thing I actually cared the least about. I knew I would make mistakes and I did make plenty. I learned the most in this stage though.
Anyways, I am terrible with cutting curved line in masks apparently. I also cut far too deep in several places causing the factory gelcoat paint/clear to fracture around the cuts. The work is SERIOUSLY amateur, but somehow for me it adds to the charm. It turned out probably better than I had thought it would. If I wasn't impatient I could actually be capable of doing a good job at it I think. I actually really like how it turned out. I haven't cleared over the black so there are some good ridges where the mask ended. Here is a closer up pic on the body, the strap, the new volume knob, and the 3 way switch I installed for the P-Rails.
The 3 way works like this - Up = rail single coil, Middle = Humbucker, Down = P90 coil.
The P-Rails hot is a very nice pickup. The single is almost more Tele sounding than Strat and the P90 is super warm sounding. I was expecting a little more aggression in P90 mode to be honest. As a straight humbucker this thing absolutely kills. It's kind of a sick love child of a JB's high definition combined with a 59 or Custom bottom. I really found out though that I should have shielded the cavities on this thing before re-assembling. The factory shielding "paint" (It looks like they just rubbed charcoal in the cavity to be honest.) does not shield bugger all. Since the coils are unbalanced it's difinitely a little more prone to noise than a standard humbucker. I'm going to order a shielding kit from stewmac eventually and install it to lower the noise.
Here is the last picture of the whole guitar. I think there will probably be more project guitars in my future. I'll try not to slam you with a Blazer style thread every time I build one though.
I've got that same strap for my black Hamer.
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