<![CDATA[Pacific Guitars all News Posts]]> http://www.pacificguitars.com en Thu, 2 Feb 2012 22:58:56 GMTPacific Guitars all News Postshttp://www.pacificguitars.com<![CDATA[Katrina Strat]]>  

  

                             Katrina Strat Slide Show

 

     This was a fun project repairing a 1975 Fender Strat that was considered by many to be unrepairable and ready for the trash. Like many people, this guitar also had the misfortune of being in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During that time, this guitar was more of a boat oar than anything else. The end result following the hurricane was a severely damaged, unplayable guitar.          

                        

 
   The fact that I like a good challenge, and this would be a great project, I decided to do the surgery necessary to return this guitar to  playable condition again. The neck and hardware took most of  the damage, the pickups and electronics were gone when this guitar came to me.
 
   While this guitar was a piece of driftwood, the water left some very dark tattoo marks in the neck wherever there was metal. Knowing I would never get all the damage marks out, I just accepted the fact that this guitar was Mother Nature's relic and all I had to do was clean it up a bit. 
 
   After checking the neck for any twisting or structural damage I found it to be fine with the exception of a small back bow that I would level out and re-radius before re-fretting, Even the truss rod was functional. After getting the neck back into something usable again, it was refinished in Stewart Mac Donald's Vintage Amber Lacquer and re-fretted with their # 152 Fretwire. The Fender Decals were ordered from big decal on ebay.
 
  I decided not to re finish the body as it was in pretty good shape and added to the relic vibe.
 
  The Pickup's selected for the guitar were John Suhr V 60's along with CTS pots ,Orange drop capacitor,CRL 5 Way Switch, Switchcraft output jack and a white pick guard. All the original hardware was used after being cleaned up.
 
   The final result was a very playable guitar and one of the best Strat tones I have ever heard in spite of the fact that this is a mid seventies era guitar which is not considered by some  to be the best time period as far as Fender Guitars go.
 
The following link is a slide show of the before and after documentation of the repair process. If the slide show moves too fast you can manually pause it and progress with the forward button  Katrina Strat
]]>Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:25:56 GMT