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The history Ladies and gentlemen, behold my 'bantal busuk' guitar: my left handed Encore stratocaster. It's one of my first guitars and was my staple guitar during my Khaimano days. Even when I bought a Samick flying V, I sold it off after a while and went back to the Strat. Why? It's comfortable. Before this strat I had a really nice Les Paul copy, even - gold plated hardware, beautiful sounding humbuckers, nice action, the works - and I sold it to buy this. Why? The comfort. Besides, back in those days I was a punk guitarist more than anything and wanted something I'd feel comfortable playing, sound be damned (since then I've grown up and understood that there's more to a guitar than a nice shape). I didn't give it the name 'bantal busuk'. Gigi, one of the top guitar maintenance guys around, did. I sent it over to him to fix it up, but after thinking about it, if I'm going to start trying this new hobby of mine, I might as well try it with whatever parts I already have. At the very least, I've got a body to play with, which means I won't have to do much woodwork. (For those who don't speak Malay, 'bantal busuk' literally means 'smelly pillow'. It's a term for those pillows that toddlers bring about wherever they go, drooling all over it and never letting you wash it. Remember that comic strip 'Peanuts'? That kid with the towel? Same concept.) As you can see from the pic, there's a ton of stickers on it, each one with a story of its own... 1. Gaffer tape - Technically not a sticker, but the strap button kept popping out so, instead of filling the hole with a toothpick and rescrewing the strap button I hammered a nail in, tied a piece of rope to it and tied the other end to the strap of my Jaguar sports bag, then gaffered it all up. The modifications Alas, that's all gonna go. For the body, I'm ripping off all the stickers, sanding the paint off and refinishing it. I'm also gonna cut off the top horn and sand it down for a strat/tele hybrid kinda shape. Once I have some money I'll probably also change the neck to a maple 70's strat neck (big-ass headstock). For now, I'm probably gonna clean up the rosewood neck, smoothen the frets, sand off some of the lacquer on the neck and cut the head to a more tele-kinda shape. I'll probably change the nut too. Why don't I just buy a neck straight? 'Cos the neck I have in mind costs about 320 singaporean dollars. Hardware-wise, I'm gonna change the tuning heads first and foremost to either original Fender tuning heads or a set of Gotoh's. Since it's tough to find a left-handed strat bridge I'm going to keep the bridge ut polish it up first, then change the saddles, possibly to original Fender saddles, depending on whether or not they'll all fit. Finally, the electronics: I'll be sticking a humbucker on the bridge, followed by two (or three) single coils. I originally wanted them all wired in series with a volume pot for each, so I sent an e-mail to the Seymour Duncan website asking advice as to how to go about it. They said it's not possible: I either put them in series with on/off switches and a master volume or wire them in parallel with separate volumes for each. Tough choice, but I'll think off something. (I also originally wanted to stick in a P-90 but can't figure out how to attach it to the pickguard). In order to see what my guitar might look like, I did a few versions in photoshop: Pictured here in racecar orange with speed lines and a '69 Strat headstock. On this pic I've also cut the bottom horn but I'm not too sure about that. And here in candy apple red with four pickups and the bottom horn intact. So, what do we start with...? Pt.1: Gutting the fucker Before anything, I've got to take the guitar apart. It's in pretty bad shape, but when I opened it up I then realized just how bad the assembly is for Encore guitars. The good news, though, is that because of the cheap design, they didn't bother to retain as much wood as possible by cutting the exact shape of the pickups into the wood, so I have a nice big cavity to put in, well, as many damn pickups as I want. Oooh, the choices... The neck was worse, though. The neck pocket was painted very thickly and the screws weren't even aligned properly. I seriously wonder how this guitar stayed together, especially after the years of abuse I've put it through. I mean, seriously: look at those holes. It's on the fucking edge! This is scaring the shit out of me! Most of the hardware and electronics were rusted, so I probably have a lot to replace. Shiite... Pt.2: Sand-ah the flwoahr Mr. Miyagi is full of shit. Seriously, he's a nutter. His so-called method of sanding would take fucking forever. At least on a guitar. After watching the whole of 'Old School' and six or seven episodes of 'My Name Is Earl', I got this far: This was in my Taman Tun house. Surrounding the guitar are (a) a pack of cigarettes for stress relief, (b) sandpaper in grits of 100, 240 and 320, (c) a magic marker that I've been using to wrap the sandpaper around to make the sanding easier, (d) a bottle of water for dehydration, (e) an old sock to wipe the body and (f) a carpet to sit on. Some of the other guys have seen it and reckon I should stop sanding and leave it as is for that 'relic' feel. I'm actually thinking of making the sanding and finishing an on-going process and start on the wiring and the neck. That way I can still use the guitar whilst working on it. And now that I can see the wood, I'm even tempted to leave it with just a wood finish: sand all the paint down and add a thin coat of lacquer. Might look quite sweet. Next up, I brought the body to FYI and nicked an electric saw from the construction workers at my house to cut off the horn: The saw's teeth were quite wide. Saiful helped out but we accidentally chipped a bit. Lots more sanding to do, by the looks of it. I need an electric sander so badly. And that's it for now. Next up: wiring!
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(N.B. This is the third time I'm writing this post. The first two times my post got lost. This may explain why this post may turn out incredibly long, as I've already gotten some way through with this little project)
For starters, the pickup cavities weren't even sanded down. Bits of wood stuck out everywhere. There was still wood-dust in the damn body! And the screws were, well, screwy. One of the screws at the back of the guitar where the springs attach popped out on the other side, pretty damn close to the pickups! Aargh!
