Building a Custom David Gilmour Inspired Fender Stratocaster

hi i'm landon today we're putting together a david gilmore inspired stratocaster so let's go [Music] hey how's it going alright i'm landon welcome to my channel if you haven't already subscribe to my channel please do that turn on notification bell and click like on this video if you do like the video so today i will be building assembling whatever word you want to use putting together a david gilmore inspired stratocaster so to date i've completed four telecaster builds and this will be my first stratocaster so it's going to be all fender parts except for the wiring kit that includes a fender black body a roasted maple neck and then i mentioned the obsidian wire is the wiring kit and it's going to be a seven way wiring kit and i'll show that after as well it's pretty cool so if you ever wanted to build your own stratocaster or parts caster hopefully this video can help you out and kind of be a guide yeah i mentioned it's a gilmore inspired stratocaster so it's inspired after his black model and i'm saying inspired because i'm not trying to capture his tones um i can't play as well as him obviously so i'm not trying to capture his playing it's not going to be spec for spec it's basically it's it's more of um i guess it's more of a tribute if you want to call it a tribute than an inspiration uh i really like the look of the the black on black with the white on the pickups and all the the plastic on the different parts contrast is really cool and then i thought the i really like the roasted maple necks from fender and that kind of adds like a little bit more it adds more of a richness to it i think uh like my other build videos i've done a couple recently this is going to be a massive video if it's anything like the other ones it's gonna be close to an hour and uh it's gonna be broken up into tons of different parts some major sections and then a bunch of different parts so i'm gonna have time stamps for everybody if you wanna use this as a reference save this video for later and you can always go back to it and if you want to see certain parts i find the time stamps really helpful in general for me i like when channels do that so the major parts without breaking it down too much first thing we're going to do is go through all the parts that i bought and i'll show you all the model numbers and everything about the parts and then i'll also talk about the pricing how much this cost and i have a spreadsheet i've kept track of everything so you're going to see a full breakdown it's all in canadian prices so i'll do a final american conversion and then you guys can take that those numbers and convert it to uh whatever currency wherever you are in the world i'll also do uh this this part i really like fender has something called the mod shop and you can go on their site and you can build a custom guitar so i'll show uh what you would get and how much that would cost if you want to kind of build the same guitar which it's an american-made guitar though if you do the fender match-up this one's not american-made so there are some differences but it's still pretty cool to compare it so we'll compare that in a quick video comparison the major part of the video is probably going to be the assembly and i'll show how i put everything together i will show any mistakes i make because i always make mistakes and that's part of the learning i think if you could build a guitar without any mistakes first time what fun is that that's not fun unless it's detrimental obviously you don't want to uh ruin the guitar so i'm always very careful these videos take a long time to make because i'm really really slow at making them i'm not trying to rush through and i think that's important if you're in a rush i wouldn't recommend trying to do this take your time so good chunk of the video will be the assembly which is the most important part because you want to see uh how everything goes together and uh i always mention this i'm not a luthier i'm just a guy and i've i think putting together a stratocaster or anything bolt-on is pretty pretty straightforward the toughest part is the setup at the end but the actual assembly is not too bad so i think anybody can really do this if you have some basic crafting skills i guess and then another section will be obviously everybody wants to hear it so i'll plug it into uh some amps and uh we'll play we'll get the tones i'll go through all the pickups i'll show what the seven way obsidian wire kit means what that actually is because i had no idea and then at the end i'll just give like a summary and uh what i think about the guitar and my overall uh yeah just a sum up at the end talk about it all right grab a bag of chips or a case of pop or whatever to get through this and let's go all right so in this part we'll go over all the parts and if i do forget anything we'll definitely see it again when i get to the assembly part so no need to worry and we'll go through everything here you'll see some of the prices as well because some some things have stickers on them but i'll also go through the full pricing after that so let's get going here all right first thing we got some made in the usa volume and tone knobs and parchment set see the price there if anything does happen to go by too quickly the the model number the part number it's in the description so you can always take a look there as well here's a four pack of neck mounting screws made in taiwan i think when i took the photo of this table some of the stuff wasn't on the table so you might see some things like this i go into uh a pack of the uh zoom in there strap buttons you can see it's a chrome made in the usa all right moving along we've got the uh the trim springs and the claw you see that there we'll show it up closer later on and moving right along we're going to take a look this is called a vintage bridge assembly you see the part number this one's made in taiwan and just a little close up here of the block all right checking out the pickguard it's a three ply i did want a single ply black but this was the only thing i could find so you can see it's shielded on the back all right moving along to the tremolo arm this is made in china and it comes with the vintage white and the normal white that's kind of cool and my least favorite part to install string guides these kind this kind anyways the american standard string guides and you'll see them close up later some strats don't have one of these but this is the the one ply back plate in a standard white so i'm gonna be putting that on now the pickups that took me a while to finally decide on these ones and i got a deal on these so that ended up being part of the factor and i like the specs on it this packaging it might these might be like new old stock you have to tell me because they don't look like the other custom shop packages that i have so you can see the resistance on the back and we'll go through that later and we'll check them out right now the wiring this is an obsidian wire kit and it's a gilmore seven way it's got a special switch in it so i'm looking forward to that that's gonna be pretty cool a few more parts here this is a jack fair rule people are like what what are you saying i just call it the output input jack but this is what it's called and one of the smallest parts that actually matters a lot it's a tremolo arm tension spring if you don't have that in there your your trim arm will just flop around all right and like i mentioned if i didn't cover everything that you see here this comes with everything you see here uh it will get mentioned when i come to it in the assembly part and just a quick look here at some of my tools that i'll be using it's not everything and if you have any questions about any of this stuff i do try to mention it when it comes up in the the installation and i'll go over it and uh yeah so there you go quick view of my tools okay so uh one of the most common questions i get on these builds is hey well how much was it was the final price so you can see down at the bottom it's 11 74 35 canadian and that converts roughly to 825 american and then you can see all the different parts yeah so i always show the the suggested retail price and then if i got a deal the price i paid and you can see there i have the fender roasted strat neck twice and uh one was defective and i had to return it um so you're gonna see that in the video i'm gonna mention that and so spoiler i had a bad neck and if you follow my channel you know that i've already shown it but anyways if you have any questions about any of these parts any anywhere that i've tried to show where i got them from a lot of them are from a local store called fleet i got some from ebay some from amazon so it varies and i try to find deals on stuff i can't always get deals and stuff so i end up paying full price but that's how it goes so there you go all right let's take a look at fenders mod shop and this is just a quick comparison and it's their website where you can go and customize a guitar and order it and it's made in the usa so obviously my build is not a made in usa this is just a fun comparison to see what you would pay if you if you did get it from the mod shop and um as far as i know i'm in canada i don't think i can actually order from fender.com so it's not even really an option for me it's more for people in the states i guess so we're just taking a look at the uh trying to get the exact same specs so we got a fender uh black stratocaster body picked uh roasted maple neck pickgard material doing black which is what i'm doing black on black it's hard to find just a one ply black pickguard from fender standard pick guards pickguard standard tuners um and then the uh the trim system couldn't find one there's they don't i don't think they offer the vintage but it's it's close enough anyways so 10 to 46 for the strings and then the other thing is this comes with a case so mine doesn't come with a case so i guess you know you could take 200 bucks off this price if you want to be closer to what the real price would be and then you can see here the checkout price 16 hey 1699.99 and uh in canada i'll pop up the conversion if i was able to get it that just gives you a rough idea of how it compares so there you go there's the fender mod shop all right let's get started here with the build the first thing i'm going to be doing is putting the neck on the body so just taking the neck out of the packaging here i've done some unboxing videos so you might have seen these already before so this is the body here this is the neck it's a roasted maple neck and uh it just slides in there we've got the four screws that i mentioned and a neck plate so this is the way i always i always do it i have this paraffin wax i take my screws and add a little bit of wax and it just helps with reducing any friction that you might get with the screws going into the the wood on the body um pretty pretty simple installation this is a neck plate i actually pulled off of an old telecaster my first telecaster made in mexico if you've ever seen my black like tele plus style telecaster so that's the neck plate i always save the parts if i ever and the reason i took it off was i replaced all the the parts on that with a gold with gold hardware so it's cool to be able to reuse this that's so that's a part from like 2002 2003 somewhere around then and uh i just start with the screws put them in one at a time kind of just like attach them a little bit and then i don't use any power tools i always do hand hand attachments you can see i'm just speeding it up here i'm just not into power tools unless i'm drilling and i need a power drill and there we go it's attached all right moving on to the tuners these are standard fender tuners hey and guess where these came from these also came from that telecaster so it's nice to be able to reuse hardware and i'm saving in the cost for this project it wouldn't be saving costs for you if you were doing it but these are standard tuners they have the two little pegs that go in they're really nice hardware they're really well made i've never had any problems with them tuning stability is always good and it's basically three parts here's the uh socket that i'm going to be using a number 10 master craft if you're from canada you know that's from canadian tire and it's really easy to install them you just fit the two little pegs in the hole then you've got a washer and it's called a bushing and you just slide that through and it just screws in and you can't really do them wrong so these are kind of the easiest ones you can install i recommend using the socket to uh to tighten it and it's just going to be a hand tightened so i've got six to do they're all the same tuners especially these ones like they're just probably the easiest thing you can install they're easy to upgrade if you ever want to do locking tuners and i've done a number of videos on that before so you can see i just turned it over pushing it through the back um they're a lot easier to install these ones there's some vintage style tuners that have like a screw that you have to drill these ones are ready to go so if you are looking at getting a neck make sure you look at what style of tuners are going to go on that neck so you want to make it as easy as possible you don't want to get the wrong kind of tuners which i've done in the past i had vintage style tuners um no i had a vintage cell neck and i tried to put on modern tuners those won't fit so there we go all right moving on strap buttons i mean you detect you don't technically need them but uh if you stand up and you want to play standing up you kind of do so i'm gonna put them on it's nice that this official fender body already has the screw holes um drilled so you don't have to worry about putting them in the wrong spot and uh so this set here it comes with felt pads you've got white and black which one should i pick um i decided on the white i like the contrast against the black i thought that'd be kind of cool so it's pretty simple you put on your uh the felt i don't know if it's felt some kind of material it's just to help so you're not you know direct contact against the paint you won't hurt it so there's just two to do do one on the top and then one directly in the bottom so same deal just put that on there super simple but super useful all right oh god not this part um the most time consuming part of this whole project is putting in shielding and i'm using shielding tape i could use shielding paint i just i've used this enough times and i still have a lot so um basically what you're doing is trying to shield the cavities because you've got single coil pickups you're trying to reduce the the hum and noise that comes out of them so this is how i do it i kind of line up a piece and i push along just to get a shape and then i got scissors and i cut it out and then i have a pencil and i use the end of the pencil like the eraser on the end i use that to uh push down and it really does a good job so we're just gonna speed through this i think the actual real time if i let you watch the whole thing we're looking at like an hour and a half it was definitely it's super time consuming if you do if you want to do a good job and when you get to the edges you can't really go over the edge very much you don't want to because um at least on on telecaster sometimes on this one as well the uh the pick guard you don't want it hanging over the edge and making it look ugly and uh so there we go got it done that wasn't too bad that was super easy look at that all right just a quick bonus section here plastic wrap removal asmr enjoy [Music] that part wasn't weird what are you talking about okay let's take a look at the obsidian wire kit and we're just going to do a quick overview before we install it pulling it out of the box here and you can see it's like a stratocaster kit you got a pull pot is that what they're called pull pot yeah and that's gonna be the secret tone selector that's gonna give you a seven way selector thing i'll explain it later you'll see it anyways uh here's what you get with it you got a little package of uh stuff that you're not supposed to eat and then you just do this with it boom gone don't worry about it okay here's the uh the jack all the wiring and everything is like top-notch that's what really impressed me about them i bought one of these years ago and uh ever since i've been using them i haven't gone back to soldering anything there's all the hardware you get with it you get a couple pics and the instruction manual it's a universal manual so anyways over to the custom 54 custom sorry custom shop 54 stratocaster pickups these are i was going for a very vintagey tone and that's exactly what these are and the ratings on the back up the little things came off and just pile them up here i did something really stupid when i was opening them up and uh i'll explain what i mean so when you look at them i'm used to i'm used to working with telecasters first of all so you got your bridge you got your neck pickup there's no mistaking what they are so pull these out and then i'm looking at them like they didn't write what each one is on the back and the only distinguishing mark maybe you can see it there it's a red circle that is the neck i can't remember if that was the neck or the bridge i forget anyways i had to go back and rewind this video and watch it and then actually take my multimeter and double check which was which because two of them are the same and one of them is different and i couldn't remember which was which so don't do that keep the stuff in the package until you're about to install it anyways by the end i figured out which was which so short story long everything was good the pickups are great and uh great tones were had by all um so here's where i'm putting in the screws and these little rubber springs i forget the actual name of them they're just rubber springs that's what we're going to call them something really weird happened here and maybe you guys can fill me in if you know the hardware that came with these pickups did not work and what i mean by that is the screws didn't fit through the holes and i've had pickups with like wax or glue that's kind of blocked the holes and you kind of just unplug it it's not the same thing here these screws were way too big for the holes and you're gonna see them struggling here so what do you do when that happens well luckily i have a lot of older parts i've got this guitar called a monoprice strat clone and there's the pickups that i pulled out of it years ago so look at these screws so i'm using the longer screws because they actually fit here i'm trying to show you they don't fit in and i wasn't going to go ahead and drill in i'm not going to ruin a you know a set of custom shop pickups so just take a look inside these these are not the custom shop pickups these are the monoprice ones you can see they got like what are they made of honey or butter or something i don't know look like butter inside here's a quick comparison open that you can see the copper there pretty cool so yeah very weird ended up using the screws from a cheap set of pickups they saved the day otherwise i would have to buy some or just find some somewhere so installing them it's pretty simple put them on make sure you know which pickup is which and uh you're good to go so there we go they're installed now and then we'll move on to uh you can see a close-up here you would never know these screws that are you know you wouldn't know they were the wrong ones you just never know so now we can move on to installing the obsidian wire kit and these obsidian wire kits they're every time i do one i get faster and faster they're just so quick here's the the socket that i'm going to be using so basically you just have to line it up with the holes on the pick guard you got your three pots coming through and your switch you might have to bend the switch a little bit it's it's loose even though it looks like it's attached and then there's two screws that you attach your pickup selector with go fast i can do that it's amazing i don't know how i do that so that's going to connect it and then on each pot there's a washer and uh a little screw that you attach and use a socket for that as well so it's really really simple five pieces basically well six seven eight okay well basically five attachments if you want to get uh technical but who wants to get technical what is he even saying anymore after uh you know just uh use your hand here just do it lightly you don't have to give it too much pressure because these uh washers you're you're tightening it against a piece of plastic so you don't have to give it too much uh pressure and then at this point you're done basically um you can attach your knobs so you've got one volume two tone knobs i don't know if i mentioned the obsidian wire kit the second tone control tone uh controls the bridge which is really nice and just you can line them up here put them on however you want whatever way you want the words to show up and if you do screw it up the the way to get these off is by chance i got those two picks sitting there and you just pry them underneath the the knob and it'll pop back up and i think i actually do it here because i didn't have them perfectly lined up you can see the the word is very close the volume was off from the tones and i'm super ocd about that kind of stuff for some reason so you go just pop it off realign it and then you're good to go and just put it back on they feel like they're kind of just pressure mounted and they feel like they're not going to come off but but you shouldn't have any trouble just give a little bit of pressure so now we're actually going to wire it and i could have cut the the leads or the wiring a little bit here's the the fender wiring which we're not going to use because we've got the the wiring diagram here for the seven way it's really cool it's really labeled really easily so white is hot and black is not no it's uh ground so you got your white hot and your ground as the black and there i just wired one already that's how quick it is and you're just putting a little bit of pressure i've got a little screwdriver here pushing down on these plastic parts that grab on to the the wire if you've seen my other videos you've seen me do this before it's super simple and um i think in real time if i didn't fast forward this i probably took me like a couple days no i'm just kidding couple minutes maybe maybe 10 minutes total a couple is not the same as 10 i know that um and i was mentioning i could have cut the cables but i didn't want to touch them i just like to leave them because you can you know you can just shape them and bend them and at this point i've got the uh the feral jack that's that's not what i call it but that's what they're called so i'm just lining it up here and we're gonna run the jack so just twist the ends and channel it through the hole just give it a little bit of push you might get stuck on the uh the tape if you're using the tape but anyways you're gonna just push it through and then pull it from the other end and then you've got it ready to go and you just mount it on the back the ferrule jack it's got a washer it's got a screw and uh it's the same kind of thing as attaching the the pots on the uh the pick guard so just attaching that here i've got my socket it's a little bit of tightening you might have to worry about the the back can twist so you might want to line it up so it's not kind of pushing depends how much space you have these uh the whole is drilled pretty well here there's a lot of space so you got a lot of room to play around with so sliding it through here and then i'm just going to kind of line it up and get it ready not going to actually drill the holes yet what i like to do is use i use this tape painters tape you can use masking tape but i find painters tape doesn't leave any residue so put that there hold it in place and then we'll do the holes later when we want to actually attach the screws and a recommendation i always um i always have like a cloth some kind of soft cloth that i put on the body i don't want to scratch the paint i'm not trying to relic this guitar so here we're attaching the the jack and it's just another two quick connections done i guess you know people might say like soldering doesn't take that long but it's it's messier it's more set up this is just quicker for sure nothing wrong with soldering if you like to do it i actually do have to do some in a minute so you're gonna see it right here so i said it was solderless well the kit is solderless but there's a couple things i got to do i have to attach a body ground and then i also have to attach a wire to the claw which is going to ground the trim system so you're going to see that quickly here this is the claw and this is the cable that or wire that i'm going to attach to it and i'm by no means an expert solderer but uh i've done enough that i can get around here's my helping hand buddy i recommend one of these if you do do soldering it gives you a third and fourth hand so here i'm just attaching some solder to the trim and probably not really doing the best job i should be kind of connecting on the bottom what i could be doing is holding the solder on the top and warming it up from the bottom that's why it's taking me so long so don't do what i'm doing don't suck like me no i'm just kidding don't blow on it i see videos where people blow on it and that's just not a good thing you don't need to blow your solder points jacks whatever i don't know what i'm trying to say anymore okay here we go now we're doing the uh the grounding cable it's a body grounding cable this is gonna get attached to the inside of the body and uh this is how you do it warm it up on the bottom and then put your solder on the top and it's just gonna melt through this is actually really fun to do if you've ever done it as long as you don't like get it everywhere i i've got a piece of cardboard underneath so it doesn't drip on top of my mat or anything so there you go i've got a good connection and that's it basically the solder points are ready to go and those are going to get installed a little bit later all right so in this part it looks like i'm installing the bridge but i'm actually just putting it in there temporarily to line up the pickguard and at this point i didn't have the screws it's the one thing i forgot to buy when i was ordering everything so i was waiting for the screws to come in so i've just got it held there and just so that i know the pickguard's gonna line up and then i'm just taping it down and what i'm gonna do is tape down all the parts and uh now i can take it off um doing pilot holes basically for uh the pick guard screws are they called pilot holes i don't know if that's what i meant i said it though so deal with it uh what i mean though is i've got the pick guard lined up i've got the uh the jack farrell lined up and i'm just like i'm marking kind of scratching a little uh a little hole so when i drill in it's gonna grab and not slide and you can see i'm just for this one i'm just using the screw just to like etch a little hole in there and then i'll be drilling out the holes and then using the well that one came with two screws and then the pick guard i had to buy pick guard screws for that so good job with the camera work there blocking it pretty easy to install the the wood is pretty soft and uh it drills out pretty well and hey nice another one can't see what he's doing i guess i was doing it but um take your time um again cover the body you don't want to if you drop the drill or if you you fall asleep on top of the guitar you know things happen um and you don't want to ruin the guitar before it's finished so at this point uh yeah the jack farrell is installed and then we're gonna do the same thing with the uh the pick guard i'm just kind of sticking another little piece of tape on the corner so it doesn't move you get one try at this i mean i guess if you screwed up the pick guard you could always plug a hole and re drill it but you don't want to do it more than once so this is how you do it you do it this fast look how fast he's going look at that guy that's amazing i wish i could do that in real life this would have been so much quicker what is he saying if remember correctly we're doing 11 screws that's why it's an 11 screw hole pick guard is that right is it 11 in this case i think i did 10. i left one out i forgot to do it and then i figured out that i missed it look do you see the one i'm missing can you see it because i didn't see it until after can you see it it's right at the top top middle hub oh look i missed that one let me do that one you i'm not anyways there we go all right so it's another new day even though for you it's the same day you're watching this in one one chunk but i had to wait a while for those screws to come in i think i waited like a week so i've got my vintage style screws for the bridge and i'm glad i waited for them because i had some other screws that i thought would work but they were definitely not the right length the the ones i was using for the placeholder would have been a mistake so you want to make sure you get the right ones and there's six pretty easy to install you just i'm doing the same thing here again i don't want to strip the body and ruin the the paint job when i'm putting these in so add a little paraffin wax you can you know if you have any other ideas for uh something like paraffin wax go ahead i'm sure it's fine it's just non-messy right it's just like candle wax so doing them all here and then once they're all down i'll show you exactly what the fender website says to do basically you kind of go through each one at a time so you kind of get them to you see the bridge lifting up a little bit go down and tighten each one when you see the bridge lift up a little bit then reverse and let it fall back down and just do that with all of them and to be honest i had no idea how the mechanics actually worked on one of these bridges i didn't realize that it's just it's floating there i thought there was some kind of part on this bridge that bent but it's it's a strip of metal that's kind of loosely attached with screws like they're held down tight but they uh they can flex so that's what the springs are doing they're allowing them to flex and that leads us to uh the next part which is installing the trim claw and it's pretty easy we've already wired the uh the grounding cable so i'll feed that through the you can see the hole is drilled which is really great with these bodies um they've done all the all the i want to say pilot holes they've done all the holes and um so you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff the holes are already done so two screws and i'm just roughing it in here for now once i attach the uh the springs i'll have to adjust it okay and so i'm just kind of sticking one screw in uh not screw one spring in for now just to line it up and see how much space you got to do and you just kind of uh adjust it as you need to go and in my case well i'm gonna put the ground wire through underneath right now run it through and we're going to rewire it later we'll actually connect it to the obsidian wire kit later so i have to go back into the pick card um probably did this out of order i probably could have done that first maybe but i didn't have the bridge and i was waiting for the screws and things got screwed up like that no pun intended yes it was okay so i've got the five springs you don't have to use five springs a lot of uh strats come with three you could use 18 springs if you want they won't fit but i mean you can use that if you want i'm doing five because i want the i want to have a little bit of uh pull but i want to be tight and stay in tune really well and that'll be tested when we play it we'll see if it stays in tune so we're opening back up the pickguard and this will give us access again so i can pull through the grounding wire and then we're also going to attach the uh the body ground cable so i'm just doing the final body ground oh no that's the other one sorry that's the tremclaw ground wire and now i'm just looking you got to find a spot that's not going to get in the way of all the parts when you put the pick guard back down so i found a good spot and this is going to be the body ground and just drilling in here carefully taking my time and uh there we go just going to attach that in there and it's got enough clearance on the edge that the switch the obsidian wire switch selector switch can fit in there it doesn't get in the way nothing's touching and it's good to go and now getting all the the cables out of the way that's kind of a challenge sometimes if you had shorter wires it'd be a little bit easier but you got to kind of get underneath the pick guard and take a look you can see them duck down there and you got to guide them through so they don't push on top of the body they got to fit through the the channels otherwise you won't be able to get it flush so it takes a little bit of work sometimes and i got it there and i always recommend doing this before you close everything back up i'm just doing a pickup wiring selector test and you just put in i'm plugged into an amp there and i'm just testing by tapping with metal and i have this sound off but otherwise that's how you can test that your connections are good nothing's more annoying than putting the pickguard back on and you have a cable that's loose or something and in this case that was good so we're ready to go all right so now's the part of the video where i installed the back plate it's also the part of the video where i make my mistake of the guitar maybe i've made a few mistakes you can let me know but this is the one that i make and i don't notice it till after see if you can notice it i'm just i'm really trying to be careful here to line up where the the back plate is going look at this scientific measuring here if the neck plate isn't straight what kind of useless measuring is that anyways he's trying okay give him credit um so i'm just putting some tape on here to line it up to line it up to make it not move sorry to keep it straight so yeah just kind of eyeing it there seeing if it looks straight to me adding a couple more pieces of tape just so it doesn't slide back and forth and all i'm doing here again is is doing the screw holes drilling into it and then i've got some more pickguard screws same screws that are on the front will work on this and just etching it there drilling in and we've got six and uh good to go here we go i wish i could do this fast in real life because man that took a while just kind of moved it over so i could reach over and grab it here a little bit easier that's the angle helps when you're trying to show it on camera sometimes the angle isn't the best there we go got them all and that's it and now some more this weird stuff for you weirdos all right we're getting there here's the strings i'm going to be using these are the kind that i like i like a hybrid 9 to 46 and these ones are nyxl's and i'm not going to make you watch me install the strings fully i'm going to make you just kind of watch like this here's the nut that they put on and it's roughly cut so i'm gonna do just do a quick rough cut with these uh nut files i'll show them uh i'll show the final cutting later and i'm just trying to get a little groove they kind of just marked it and you're just cutting so now i can string it and then at least get the strings through and then move on to our next step which will be the most nerve-wracking part of this whole thing it's like it's so small this is the string guide install and uh this particular type it has you gotta make two holes it's got like a little notch and then it's also got the screw that's gonna attach so i'm just trying to uh kind of mark it there it's on your e your high e um and b string so see how small it is and uh kind of just hanging it there and roughing it in take your time on this they say measure twice cut once i say measure like 10 times for this one drill a little bit at a time don't push too hard you just want to get a little bit out you don't want to drill through the back of the the head and so i've got it on backwards here because basically i'm marking the second hole because they're they're they're spread out the exact same distance so you can drill one turn it around drill the second one i'm just etching it there and again take your time really really seriously um i screwed up the first one i did with my blue telly i slipped and didn't get it perfect so i don't know if that hurts the uh the intonation or the tuning at all for the the other one this one was good i got it done but i hate doing those all right this will be the part where i uncover where i made a mistake and it's kind of hard to see but um i'll zoom in so you can kind of see i'm opening up the the plate here because i want to deck the trim and i'll explain what that means in a sec one of the uh you didn't even show it okay there see how it's floating i want to uh sink that so it's flat against the body so basically what i was trying to say was uh i drilled one of the holes right at the edge where the back plate is and it's kind of not even so basically i've got like five good screws and one bad screw holding the neck plate so um there you go that's what i wanted to do you kind of have to go through and adjust it a few times you might have to go back and forth and did i hide it i wasn't trying to hide i was trying to actually show it that's the that's the worst mistake i made on this build so not too bad that screw right there is just catching the corner all right so now we're moving on to um the setup and this can be difficult but um it gets easier over time and the first step we're doing here is called the neck relief so i'm taking a capo and i've got a feeler gauge one .010 is my measurement and basically you're sticking it under uh the seventh fret at this point and if it moves you need to uh either bend or straighten the neck so lefty loosey righty tighty in my case i need to loosen it a little bit so you see i'm counting down there and uh if it's pushing the string i think i was good at this point a little bit of movement so i think i was adjusting a little bit more just give it like a quick quarter turn sorry my hands blocking it there a lot of good videos online about this so if this isn't clear um and i'm just checking it there all right next section is the bridge action height so on the 17th fret i've got a little ruler i want it to be 1.6 millimeters from the the bottom of the uh the fret to the sorry the bottom of the string to the top of the fret and so i'm kind of not showing it very well here but you're gonna adjust the saddles up and down to raise the height of the string again there's a lot of good resources online i'm just showing it quickly here just to show you what i do i'm going to do that's a fender spec 1.6 and kind of just adjusting it there action is totally a personal preference um some people like it high i kind of like it not too high not too low so kind of in the middle and once you have that set up you can move on to the nut action height so i did rough in earlier in the little grooves with these uh nut files you can see here point zero one eight on my my gauge here what i'm doing is it's a feeler gauge feeling underneath the first fret and if there's a big gap i wanna cut the the nut so the string can lower down so starting with the 0.046 and this is the kind of thing you just do a little bit at a time you loosen the string pull it off then retune it and you check again with the feeler gauge it's kind of a lot of back and forth so i kind of just rough it in and usually i go back later if things weren't good you don't want to go too much because it's kind of the thing where if you cut the nut too low you're either going to replace the nut you're going to try to fill in the hole and it's just it can be a mess so take your time don't go as fast as i'm doing what are you doing buddy slow down yeah so anyways uh trying to get it done here and once you do it a few times it gets easier and you want to just follow the path of the string now this isn't something i've done on my on my telly's marketing genius the name here big ben's nut sauce basically it's a lubricant that you're putting in your nuts or my nut in this case it's a little bit it's like a vaseline kind of thing you squeeze it in with a little tube and then you got a little brush to clean it up and uh because i'm using the trim on this guitar it's supposed to help keep it in tune and just lubricate the nut so the nut isn't pulling it's letting the string slide through and you're not going to get friction that will detune the guitar i guess i guess it pulls on the tuners and puts it out of tune at least that's what i think that's how it works let me know if that's the theory behind it you can also use graphite this one maybe is a little bit dirtier i've had this for a while so i'm using that don't put it in your mouth what are you doing right and the last part should be this should be the last part the intonation where you're checking the uh the see that the guitar stays in tune all the way up so the open e string you want to sound the same at the 12th fret which is an octave up and then you can lower or shrink or grow expand the string length and that's what i'm doing here and i thought all was good and then something happened so let's just have a listen here [Music] hopefully you can see that the 12th fret was messed up it looks like a different gauge wire it was completely lower than the rest not usable i had to send the neck back i couldn't fix it it was just not usable so here's my new neck days later actually was only a few days later it was really amazing the original neck i bought it from amazon they took it back no problem so the guitar is ready to go and uh just reinstalling a neck that's the great thing about bolt on next not michael bolton just bolt-on necks got four bolts and it's super easy to put back on watch how fast i can do it there we go so minor headache not too bad easy to fix we're getting there we're almost at the we're almost at the end here we've almost got it done had it done once and then i had to re-done it again um one last little thing here that i didn't really know about as well and figured out at the end these little trim screws there's different ways to do this i'm just sticking one in some people put ball bearings and stuff like that too to help if you don't put that in when you wind this it just kind of never connects it never grabs it never gets tight so you can see how it's going to grab it here there we go that's what the spring does so i've got a pack they come in packs of 12. so there we go that's the installation let's check out a few specs now we're gonna weigh this baby i like light guitars not super light but i like guitars that weigh 3.524 kilograms which is awesome and now i'm going to run through the impedance and you can just check out the numbers there as they go but this was something i had to do earlier when i lost track of which pickup was which but at the time i didn't have the gilmore switch installed so that shows a couple different readings depending if the switch is active or not so you're gonna see a change in the numbers here except for two of the selections so it's a seven way switch because you've got the five and then two more because five plus two is seven right so there we go that that was some great math and i'm just trying to fill in the void here while you're watching this and it's always tough to show these numbers because of the lighting it's the worst part why is he still talking this doesn't matter don't worry hey you know what you made it this far you're going to love the rest of the video the rest of the video is a beautiful gallery showing the guitar and i hope you're into david gilmour stuff and pink floyd stuff and weird guitar tones because i sure am it's my favorite stuff so enjoy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] ah [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] then [Music] [Applause] [Music] this [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] then [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] still in tune [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] still in tune still in tune not kidding [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh wow did you make it through that that's amazing if you got through that in one sitting congratulations because i didn't that doesn't make sense but no actually probably i did that was uh truly a marathon of a video and uh hopefully that was entertaining and useful and helpful that's the i like doing these you know what i used to do these builds before youtube and um i just found them fun they're always fun i really like finding parts i really like finding deals on stuff which reminds me if you're gonna do one of these really look for deals i hardly ever pay full price for something because there's always sales for stuff or even just ask it's always worth asking hey can i have five percent off or something a lot of people are willing to uh flex a little bit so these videos like i mentioned they're really fun they take weeks usually they take a long time to get all the parts in uh and then the editing filming and editing is a killer it's just it takes forever so but they're worth it so i hope you like that i mentioned before i always learn something new i always make at least one mistake you saw in this case the mistake was with the drilling of the uh the plate on the back and i know for next time right it wasn't killer some people don't even have plates on the back of their strats so it didn't ruin the guitar but when i did it i was kind of like ah geez what why can't i just have it perfect but like i said you're not learning anything if you do that right that's gonna wrap it up but now i'll turn it over to you do you think this is even worth doing because you've seen the price you've seen how much i paid for all the stuff versus a build is it just better to buy a guitar or is this something that's worth it to you let me know and that's going to be it for this video if you haven't already check out my other build videos i'll try to put them in the cards or in the description somewhere if you haven't already please subscribe to my channel click a like share this with your friends if you know anybody that's um into stratocasters that's looking to build something hopefully this can help them and maybe just give inspiration to somebody as well as always play guitar and have fun and i will see you in the next video take care [Music] [Music] baby [Music] you

Channel: Landon Bailey

Views: 392,719

Keywords: landon bailey, guitar, Stratocaster Build, David Gilmour Black, partscaster, Building a guitar, stratocaster partscaster, obsidianwire Custom '7 Way' for Strat Gilmour Switch, Pink Floyd solo, fender, telecaster, building a guitar, fender telecaster, how to make a guitar, roasted maple neck, david gilmour, the black strat, pink floyd, fender stratocaster, american vintage reissue II, electricguitar, fender musical instrument corporation

Id: 5Bgczn5oO_s

Length: 55min 36sec (3336 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020