Thanks to all for the input & encouragement!
Allllllrighty, it's done - 7mths and about 100hrs of fettling and we're super chuffed with the result.
A quick re-cap : Under the skin it's a Cort G200 that someone had attempted to mod. The neck was straight, frets as new, but the body was slightly abused and pickups & pickguard were trashed.
Graham, Olly and I were brainstorming what to do with it and the idea to modge-podge using some old & trashed batman comics from my collection became the "Bat-Strat".
I organized the parts, Olly & Flicki did 98% of the hard work (great job on the design Flicki!).
Custom touches include : 3x genuine 80's comic books plastered all over the body w/10 coats of a clear poly , see-thru pickguard, hand made bat logo input jack cover, 4xblue leds that light up when the input jack is connected, new pickups (tonerider humbucker, 2x duncan single's) & a few tiny details (neat wiring, black string tree's, chromed vol, tone & pickup selector knobs)
It looks the business...and now that I can actually play test it here's my 0.02c
How does it play...? Ok - I'm biased - it plays like a champ! It's wearing a low 'n sexy setup like a batsuit (err... ?) No fret buzz, intonation is good and plenty scope for adjustment for personal taste.
How does it sound? Surprisingly inspiring. Gain tones are sweet, it handles crunch to high gain with no worries. We shielded as much of the wiring as we could, so very little hum and rf noise. Even the middle and neck pickups can be encouraged to produce pinch harmonics =D
The clean tones - in all positions - are real good too. The neck pup is a full strat neck sound, no mistaking it. Pos 2 (bridge and middle) was a pleasant surprise - very interesting full sound too.
If you be around the gear junkie in cape town, pop in and give it run.