Ok so Its finally finished.
After buying some of the chrome hardware I had a bit of a re-think of how I wanted the guitar to look, and decided with the matt/satin finish on the body all black hardware would look cool. Im sure you know of the fender builder app where nice strat mok-ups can be made. as stated before, the idea behind this guitar is to build it as cheaply as possible, and see what kind of guitar I'll get for being a cheapskate.
So on e-bay searches i looked specifically at chinese suppliers, with free shipping (cheapskate me), and found this whole hardware kit including pre wired pickguard for R430.00 After a couple of confusing emails I asked the seller to replace all parts except the white pickguard itslef for black parts.
I waited about 5 weeks for the parts to arrive and everything was like I asked except for the volume and tone knobs and selector tips should have been black as well, but I will replace those sometime with black parts.
The quality of the hardware is exactly the same as the parts I ordered form Terry Distributers, and included everything I needed. the holes in the headstock were somewhat big for the machineheads, so I had to make some bushings for those to fit properly.
The guitar keeps it's tuning well and the machineheads feel nice, but obviously there still a sense of cheap in them, but not bad for the money I paid.
Sound? how well do you expect cheap chinese pickups to sound? I realise that some forumnites have very very expensive guitars and the sound of this guitar will probably make your ears bleed, but for now I think it sounds ok
I will change all the electronics someday and Im thinking of wilkinson pickups,and also there's american 'dragontone" wired pickguards which look quite good, but for now they will do and the biggest surprise is the bridge pickup, in my opinion not too bad at all for the price! Without being plugged in the guitar has a loud, clear sound to it, not as heavy and dead sounding as my Crafter Tele, but this might just be because of the higher action, as far as I know the are both made out of the same woods. being a strat shape body its quite comfortable to play!
It could really do with a proper setup though, and the neck angle seems wrong, I'll try and adress that next!
