Building My DREAM GUITAR! (Heavy Relic Strat)

hello and welcome to this video of me building my dream guitar as you can probably see it's a shell pink heavy relic stratocaster i don't want to waffle too much at the start of the video so i'm going to go over the specs more as i go but just a very brief rundown i've gone for seymour duncan ssl ones which are vintage voice single coil pickups in the neck and middle position i've got an sh4 in the bridge which i read online it's very good for rock and blues which is mainly what i play the body and the neck are both custom made from warmth guitars in the us the body is a two piece older body which i believe is what they were using for the bodies in the 60s which is kind of what i'm modeling this strat after and the neck is a cortisone maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard i paid a little bit extra for them to pick a specifically dark piece of wood for the fingerboard and i think it looks really nice i'll show a photo now of all the parts laid out on the floor before i started building as you can see here i went for a monty's wiring loom so i didn't have to do too much soldering for the bridge i went with the goto vintage style six screw tremolo and then for the tuners i went with fender vintage style road worn tuners just so they would match the aesthetic of the guitar if at any point in this video you get bored of the time lapses or me ranting about the emotional rollercoaster of putting this together feel free to skip to the end because i do some tone tests that sound really cool [Music] that's enough talking let's get on with the video the first thing i did is tape off the bits of the body and the neck that i didn't want to get paint on i'm using nitrous cellulose both for the color of the body and also the lacquer going on the neck like i said earlier the body and the neck are both from warm with guitars in the us in general i tried to spec it to be fairly vintage but i also went with a couple of more modern features to make it a bit easier to play and maintain most notably is probably the truss rod adjusting at the heel instead of the headstock just like a vintage fender i much prefer this look i think it makes the headstock look a lot cleaner i went for a nine and a half inch radius fretboard instead of a seven and a quarter and that's just because i'm used to nine and a half that's what's on my american strat so i thought stick with what i know and i also went with the 6150 stainless steel frets and i went with stainless steel just because it wears down slower so it means i have to get a refresh for a long time here you can see me putting on the water slide decal of the fender logo i've used these decals a few times now and i think they're really cool this is the first time i put it on a guitar and not mugged it up at all i built a telly around this time last year and i messed it up a little bit so it's a bit of um the decal came off luckily it was a relic guitar so it doesn't really matter to get that darker look on the back of the neck where it's been played for a long time i put one coat of sanding sealer on and then sanded it back and did a few coats of vinegar which makes it go a bit dark and gray and then while the coats of that were drying i went over all the bits of plastic like the pick guard and the knobs and stuff with some steel wool took all the shine off of it this is a really good way of just making them look a bit less new kind of takes the sheen off and makes them look a bit more matte then what i also like to do is go over them with some black shoe polish this kind of goes into all the little scratches and the bits that are kind of hard to get to it makes the volume and tone knobs look nice and grubby without them being authentically disgusting and it also gets rid of that perfectly clean look from the pickup covers then i started doing the rest of the coats of the nitro on the neck i used a tinted lacquer called weakest amber and it gives it that nice kind of vintage orange yellow look and then later on in the day the shell pink paint turned up as well so i painted the body i left the body and the neck to dry overnight and then the next morning i took all the tape off and started wet sanding everything which is my least favorite part of the process this is what the neck looks like before sanding i did the tinted lacquer slightly overlapping onto the bits where i did the vinegar and then i sanded it back to get a nicer transition between the yellow and the grey of the neck it didn't work quite so well on this neck it looks a little bit sanded but i think after a few months of playing it'll probably wear away and look fine here i'm doing a few coats of danish oil to seal the neck so that on the bits where i've sanded it back to the bare wood it won't be absorbing any oils and stuff from my skin i saw this trick online and i thought i'd give it a shot it's basically just rolling the edges of the fingerboard a bit more by flattening them with something i used the edge of the scalpel and it worked quite well then more sanding so much fun i went out progressively through different levels of sandpaper from about 800 to 3000 to try and get the nice polished look of the nitro and then this was the most nerve-wracking part of the build for me i think mostly because i hadn't done it before and also because i just spent two days making the paint look nice and perfect and doing all the sanding and now i'm basically going to ruin it what i'm doing here is using masking tape to trace on all the details of the relic from a few reference images of different guitars that i liked the look of then once it was traced on i used the scalpel to cut out those sections and then scraped away the bits of the exposed nitro same deal for the back again i'm copying a few reference images that you can see me looking at on my laptop once i'd finished scratching all the paint off i then went over it with some sandpaper the idea with this was to try and blend it in a bit more to the paint so that it looked a bit more worn out instead of just scratched off with a scalpel like it was i managed to capture this great clip of me fully grabbing the end of the scalpel i put the bridge in place and then did a few scratches around the screws where the screwdriver might slip when you're changing the intonation this happens quite a lot on strats [Music] then i used a very high-tech brick wall to do a little bit more relicking then i turned back to old trusty black shoe polish again i rubbed it into all the exposed wood and all the dented bits and then left it for a couple of minutes to sit and then when you wipe it back off it kind of stays in all the dents so it looks quite cool then i made the world's strongest cup of coffee and used that as a wood stain on the exposed bits of wood which makes it go nice and dark and then i also sanded through to some of the lighter bits of wood underneath in the areas like above the pick guard where it would be a bit lighter from kind of being hit a lot by the pick i suppose i did a few coats of this and i used a heat gun in between to speed up the process a bit and then believe it or not even though it's a super relic guitar i did a bit of guitar polish on top just to make the bits of paint that still existed a bit shinier next up i started relicking all the bits of hardware like the screws i used something called ferric chloride which i think is an acid and basically when you put it on the screws it makes them go a bit rusty so i just put some on the top of a cotton bud and then wiped it on the top of all the screws and left them for a few minutes and they basically go quite oxidized which looks really cool i also found the bridge from an old mexican strat i had lying around as a spare part and i swapped over the saddles so that i had some official fender branded saddles on the goto bridge just so it looked a bit more authentic [Music] then i installed the bridge just with a couple of screws for now just to keep it lined up and then i also drilled the holes for the pickguard and then it was time to start installing the electronics like i said earlier i have this really nice wiring loom i got from monty's guitars in london it comes in super cool packaging and all the parts are really high quality so this was really awesome i basically just took the loom off the thing that it came on and then installed it into the pickguard then i started installing the pickups i'd never installed a humbucker before so this was a bit of a new experience for me the springs were really tricky to get to stay on the screws and they went flying across the river about four times before i actually managed to get the humbucker to sit in the pit guard then i was on familiar ground with the single coils these are a bit easier because they just have that surgical tubing stuff and then it was just onto the soldering i was a little bit out of my depth with this i'd done a telecaster build last year but obviously the switch for a telly is a little bit less complicated than a strap one and then not to mention i ended up breaking this switch so the reason i bought the pre-made loom was so i didn't have to do all the soldering but because i broke it i had to desolder all of these parts and then look at a wiring diagram and basically redo it luckily i managed to get it to work but it took me about three attempts and then once everything was installed i went to put the pick guard on and it didn't quite fit i think i drilled the hole for the second tone pot a little bit too close to the edge so the wires and stuff were sticking out a little bit and it just couldn't fit into the cavity properly so my solution was basically to use a dremel with a sanding tool and just make the cavity a little bit bigger and then the sanding bit exploded on me nearly took my head off not quite sure what happened there i think the general might have been on too high of a setting and it just heated up or something but yeah definitely made me jump then i just put in the rest of the screws into the pick guard and then soldered up the input jack even though it's a 50 50 chance of getting it right i stupidly got these wires the wrong way round i had the jack upside down compared to the wiring diagram i was looking at this caused a bit of a grounding problem which you see a little bit later in the clip where i plug it in for the first time but i sussed it out eventually and swapped them over so it was fine and now we're on the home stretch the reamer turned up so i can make the tuner holes the proper size to install the nine millimeter bushings or whatever they're called i did specify the correct size for the tuners i'm using when i ordered it from walmart but i guess they ship it with the holes too small then you'd have to make them a bit bigger so it's guaranteed to fit whatever you're putting in the tuner holes then i flipped it over and just used a ruler to line up the actual tuners and then drilled the holes for them so i could put the screws in and then all that was really left to do was a bit of a setup on the neck warmers do say that when the guitar necks arrive they probably will need some sort of fret job on them i checked the neck relief and it was fine and then i just used a fret rocker and i found about seven or eight of the frets were a little bit too high and i just used a really cheap fret file that i had in the guitar maintenance kit and just filed them down a little bit and it worked fine then a quick polish with some steel wool just to get rid of all the sanding marks and scratches from the fret file and now we really are onto the last steps so i put the neck into the neck pocket and i have to say the fit is amazing i guess because i bought a warmer neck and body they're like perfectly made for each other but it's the snuggest neck fit i've ever felt on a strat put a little bit of candle wax on the screw so they go into the body nice and smoothly and then before i put the screws all the way in i put the high and low e strings on the neck and then i could make sure that the bridge was perfectly lined up so that the strings weren't hanging off the edge of the fretboard on one side which i've had problems with in the past then once it's lined up you can screw them in properly and then it kind of holds in that position i did the old graphite in the nut slots trick to make them nice and slippery so the strings wouldn't get caught and then finally i installed a string tree i put a little bit of the acid on this as well just to make it oxidized slightly especially as it's next to the road worn tune is it needs to look a similar age and then the absolute last thing i did is install the strap buttons i got some sharla ones i use these on all of my guitars i think they're really cool so i just drilled the holes for them and then installed the strap buttons and then here you can see me just doing a very last minute setup adjusting the string heights on the saddles and then installing the whammy bar which is very important and then i plug it in for the first time [Music] and there we go that concludes the journey of this strat i have finished building it i've put the last screw in and it works amazingly in general this has taken me probably about seven days on and off of building stuff a lot of that was just waiting for things to turn up like i had to wait until this morning for the reamer for the tuner holes to turn up so in terms of actual man-hours it was probably like 12 to 15 hours i'd say of putting stuff together and all the painting and everything after i finished doing the initial setup on the table over there i did a little bit more tweaking of the intonation and stuff to get it perfect and i've been playing it for a couple of hours between finishing putting it together and actually filming this video and it sounds amazing so i've got my pedalboard down here the gopro is filming it i'm pointing my toes at it now hopefully what you're going to hear is some of my pedals going into the hx stomp from line six i've got a preset that i made in here called gravity that's kind of like a john mayer-esque um fender style tone and then it's got a celestian ir i can't remember which speaker it is but it just sounds like a fender style amp basically of course for any strat tone test where to do this [Music] [Applause] [Music] sounds pretty good to me then if i kick on a tube screamer i can do some stevie ray vaughan kind of stuff [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] played very very badly they also have a boss ds1 which i kick on to do some john frashante kind of chili pepper tones [Music] then i also have a oneplus on here which is obviously a kind of clone style pedal and i use this a lot for kind of hendrixy john mayer stuff and then of course there is the less traditional strat part of this build which is the humbucker in the bridge the reason i wanted to have a strap with a humbucker in the bridge is because i go busking a lot and obviously i only take one guitar when i do that and i would like to have the option of having single coils and a humbucker so this is what that sounds like [Applause] there we go that's some chuck berry i'm gonna wrap that up there i hope you guys thought this was really cool um i've obviously really enjoyed this process and i now have a very cool guitar at the end of it thank you very much for watching check out some of the covers and stuff on my channel as well if you're interested in hearing some of my music peace [Music]

Channel: Alfie Vaughan Music

Views: 122,457

Rating: 4.8886976 out of 5

Keywords: Alfie, Vaughan, Singer, Songwriter, Guitar, Electric, Acoustic, Cover, Band, Bass, Drums, dream, build, building, custom, nitrocellulose, fender, stratocaster, parts, caster, heavy, relic, customshop, seymour, duncan, humbucker, single coil, HSS, vintage, pickguard, how to, tutorial, relicing, aged, road worn

Id: cddtEROLEL8

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021