jhale667
New member
I know Xssive who posts here has built a bunch of mutts like me, but who else?
I’ll get the ball rolling with my kids, and a little background:
When I was a kid, as most were at the time, I was inspired to play when I heard Edward Van Halen (and saw the infamous “Bumblebee”). Started playing on a junker Memphis, graduated to a real Fender Strat later that year, then a Kramer Voyager…but I wanted a Bumblebee. As I voraciously poured over every article I could get my hands on about EVH, I kept seeing more about how he'd built his own guitars, because he “couldn’t get what he wanted” from an off-the-rack store bought guitar. Well, neither could I. I wanted what he had, and I lived in a small town so there was no way I was getting a Charvel, or a Strat with a Humbucker and a Floyd. THEN I saw (at the time) you could get parts from Charvel (!) and a pal at the local music store sent me to the guy they sent all their repairs to, who kind of took me under his wing and showed me how to assemble them “So you don’t have to pay people to do it”..!! Didn't show me how to do frets, still have to farm that out, dang it...but I can do basic assemblies, wiring and setups.
So long story short, I got a Charvel neck – a 1 ¾” nut width one, because besides having huge hands, I’d read that was what EVH, and George Lynch, and by that time Warren Demartini – were using, and a body made of Ash (read EVH was using it, of course), a Duncan Distortion and a Floyd – and built what became my baby:
Another guy in my hometown got a (lawsuit) Bumblebee Charvel first, so decided against the stripes. But I LOVED it once I got it together (still do to this day). By this time I was out of high school and gigging, but I was hooked on building my own, I saw no use other than a spiffy paintjob, to pay at least a grand more for a custom-shop equivalent of the guitars I was envisioning. I got way into reading up on the specifics of what my favorite players were using so I could decide whether I wanted to incorporate it into what I was trying. Since I’d settled on a neck, and now wanted to try different body woods…bought another Charvel neck and a maple body (Lynch said it’s cool!...lol), did a S/H set up, which was cool, but wasn’t so much into maple bodies, I discovered. Dumped the body, kept the neck for future use.
Later, I built another S/H setup, this time trying Warmoth parts. Same nut width, but this time a compound-radius Ebony fingerboard (hooked on the compound radius now, btw). Decided on a 1-piece Koa body – always loved the looks of them, and wanted to hear it, since it’s basically Hawaiian Mahogany.. the piece I ended up with is kinda “meh” visually but sounds amazing!
She’s kind of my main Humbucker/Floyd Strat these days. If Koa wasn't prohibitively expensive and on the endangered species list, I'd probably get another 1-piece body.
I’d always regretted dumping the Fender, though, and when I started playing cover gigs that required more than just metal all night, I decided to build some more “traditional” Strats:
Those two have almost identical pickups (Dimarzio Virtual Vintage Blues, 54’s and Solos) and do have identical hardware. If it’s not going to be a Floyd I love the Fender American Vintage bridges.
Funny story about the Purple one: Found it in a pawnshop, saw it was a 1-piece Ash body (which I wanted anyway). Got it for $180, sold everything but the body from it –which I then had $40 in – and rebuilt it from the ground up. She was originally supposed to be a back-up for the Sunburst one (which is Mahogany with a flame maple cap) but it sounded SO much better it usurped her authori-tay…. From the neck plate on it in its original form, I tracked down the builder and he said he made that body around 1988. I think besides being 1-piece (vs. 3-piece Mahogany), the age of the wood gives it an advantage. You know, as the saying goes “It takes 5 years for a guitar to figure out it’s NOT A TREE ANYMORE…”
but it smokes the other one! That picture doesn’t do the color justice, here’s one that does….
I switched to EMGs in my guitars with humbuckers for almost a decade at one point, but went back to Duncans a couple of years ago. And as I've mentioned in another thread, all the Floyds have Brass or Titanium FloydUpgrades Big-Blocks.
I've gotten the itch to build again in a BIG way, and so I got a 1-piece Ash (pretty much my fave wood these days) Musikraft body to replace the maple one I dumped years ago with the Charvel neck, but then decided to do a different project with that body with an oil finish since it looked so cool when I got it. I got a 2-piece Ash KnE body for the Charvel neck. And I decided to resurrect the Voyager as well...held on to the body since high school...
So let’s see other people’s Parts-mutt masterpieces!
I’ll get the ball rolling with my kids, and a little background:
When I was a kid, as most were at the time, I was inspired to play when I heard Edward Van Halen (and saw the infamous “Bumblebee”). Started playing on a junker Memphis, graduated to a real Fender Strat later that year, then a Kramer Voyager…but I wanted a Bumblebee. As I voraciously poured over every article I could get my hands on about EVH, I kept seeing more about how he'd built his own guitars, because he “couldn’t get what he wanted” from an off-the-rack store bought guitar. Well, neither could I. I wanted what he had, and I lived in a small town so there was no way I was getting a Charvel, or a Strat with a Humbucker and a Floyd. THEN I saw (at the time) you could get parts from Charvel (!) and a pal at the local music store sent me to the guy they sent all their repairs to, who kind of took me under his wing and showed me how to assemble them “So you don’t have to pay people to do it”..!! Didn't show me how to do frets, still have to farm that out, dang it...but I can do basic assemblies, wiring and setups.
So long story short, I got a Charvel neck – a 1 ¾” nut width one, because besides having huge hands, I’d read that was what EVH, and George Lynch, and by that time Warren Demartini – were using, and a body made of Ash (read EVH was using it, of course), a Duncan Distortion and a Floyd – and built what became my baby:
Another guy in my hometown got a (lawsuit) Bumblebee Charvel first, so decided against the stripes. But I LOVED it once I got it together (still do to this day). By this time I was out of high school and gigging, but I was hooked on building my own, I saw no use other than a spiffy paintjob, to pay at least a grand more for a custom-shop equivalent of the guitars I was envisioning. I got way into reading up on the specifics of what my favorite players were using so I could decide whether I wanted to incorporate it into what I was trying. Since I’d settled on a neck, and now wanted to try different body woods…bought another Charvel neck and a maple body (Lynch said it’s cool!...lol), did a S/H set up, which was cool, but wasn’t so much into maple bodies, I discovered. Dumped the body, kept the neck for future use.
Later, I built another S/H setup, this time trying Warmoth parts. Same nut width, but this time a compound-radius Ebony fingerboard (hooked on the compound radius now, btw). Decided on a 1-piece Koa body – always loved the looks of them, and wanted to hear it, since it’s basically Hawaiian Mahogany.. the piece I ended up with is kinda “meh” visually but sounds amazing!
She’s kind of my main Humbucker/Floyd Strat these days. If Koa wasn't prohibitively expensive and on the endangered species list, I'd probably get another 1-piece body.
I’d always regretted dumping the Fender, though, and when I started playing cover gigs that required more than just metal all night, I decided to build some more “traditional” Strats:
Those two have almost identical pickups (Dimarzio Virtual Vintage Blues, 54’s and Solos) and do have identical hardware. If it’s not going to be a Floyd I love the Fender American Vintage bridges.
Funny story about the Purple one: Found it in a pawnshop, saw it was a 1-piece Ash body (which I wanted anyway). Got it for $180, sold everything but the body from it –which I then had $40 in – and rebuilt it from the ground up. She was originally supposed to be a back-up for the Sunburst one (which is Mahogany with a flame maple cap) but it sounded SO much better it usurped her authori-tay…. From the neck plate on it in its original form, I tracked down the builder and he said he made that body around 1988. I think besides being 1-piece (vs. 3-piece Mahogany), the age of the wood gives it an advantage. You know, as the saying goes “It takes 5 years for a guitar to figure out it’s NOT A TREE ANYMORE…”
but it smokes the other one! That picture doesn’t do the color justice, here’s one that does….
I switched to EMGs in my guitars with humbuckers for almost a decade at one point, but went back to Duncans a couple of years ago. And as I've mentioned in another thread, all the Floyds have Brass or Titanium FloydUpgrades Big-Blocks.
I've gotten the itch to build again in a BIG way, and so I got a 1-piece Ash (pretty much my fave wood these days) Musikraft body to replace the maple one I dumped years ago with the Charvel neck, but then decided to do a different project with that body with an oil finish since it looked so cool when I got it. I got a 2-piece Ash KnE body for the Charvel neck. And I decided to resurrect the Voyager as well...held on to the body since high school...
So let’s see other people’s Parts-mutt masterpieces!
I've had reeeeeally good luck with how my builds have turned out, probably because I'm so OCD about every detail! 
Chandler neck, a Wilkinson bridge (which I hear works better than a Fender vintage bridge, but hated the looks and more importantly the feel of it) and Floyd Rose pickups (honest had no clue they'd ever made pickups until then), but I saw that finish and noticed the body was 1-piece and was like "I MUST have this". Funny how it turned out to be my #1 traditional build! 
