How To Turn An $80 Squier into a John Frusciante 1962 Stratocaster

hi guys and welcome to Wilson guitar today I'm going to attempting to recreate John Frusciante is 1962 Fender Stratocaster using a squire now a lot of people think that Squires are inherently awful sounding guitars they're cheap they're nasty but I want to show people with the right modifications you can get a guitar that sounds pretty damn good now if I had several thousand pounds kicking around I could probably get the Custom Shop to build me one of these things but I don't and I like taking things apart I like modifying them experimenting never putting them back together again it's fun so here we have it this is the square standard Stratocaster that I picked up for 80 pounds on Facebook I'll be changing just about everything on this guitar apart from the neck and the body and putting in new tunas I've regard that is absolutely necessary on this guitar I mean they are shocking rarely bug tuners I'll be changing them no doubt for a bone not a level and I'll crown all the frets and I'll also be changing out the bridge for a much higher quality very high mass steel bridge I'll be swapping out the pick guard for a mini green one and the pickups are be upgrading to the ones that John uses in his strats which is the Seymour Duncan SSL one set a lot of be replacing the cheap wiring in 500 care pots with 250 care cts pots for all you nerds out there I'll be removing this thick polyester finish from the guitar and replacing it with a nitrocellulose 3 torn sunburst before then ruining it with car keys and belt Sanders and all that Canon jazz so the first modification we're gonna make is to remove this access cover for the tremolo now I think these things only exist to make it harder for you to restring onstage yeah infuriating things so yeah that can go I'm gonna put a brand new set of d'addario tens on here so the comparison should be fair with the brand new strings on both before and after I'll also be measuring the pickup Heights with digital calipers and I'll make sure that my amp settings are identical so we should be able to draw some really good comparisons here between the before and after and really analyze if the changes that I'm gonna make not make any difference at all I imagine the pickups will make the biggest difference I hope to prove wrong in the the finish on the guitar I hope that improves the sound a lot of people rave on about the nitro cellulous it lets the guitar resonate better the tuners I'm sure will make a huge difference because like I said earlier then the stock tuners on on these squares these basic squares are really really poor quality I've never had much good luck with them and these weren't staying in Shu and they were actually difficult to turn slipping Wow just absolutely horrendous I really think square could do with upgrading those even on the most basic models because that must be so frustrating for a beginner so one thing that surprised me about the guitar as I was taking it apart and having a light on it and demoing it was the neck on this thing yeah it's really quite fat it's probably fatter than my other struts that I've got and the nut width is a hair over four to two millimeters as well so remarkably similar to what you would find on an on a vintage instrument a slightly round of fat in there American standard strats they have a forty three mil nut width and while that doesn't sound like a lot I find that that one mill can make really quite a big difference and how easy is for me to get my thumb over the top antler like for shantae so here I am in the garden on one of those rare sunny days in the north of England I'm attaching a temporary MDF neck just to make it easier to hold really well I sunned and script where the old finish for men like work I'm using a heat gun and a scrapper it takes a while and it really really stinks I mean do not do this in darlin that any circumstances thankfully here I had the wind behind me but it even even then it still sticks it gets a bit upstream so once I'd finished cooking this thing I get to work with my absolute favorite power - I must say I don't really enjoy the process of stripping guitars it's a dusty eun-seo job like I said earlier it stinks you really do have to wear a good quality masking to house but it's a blessing and a curse it's satisfying to see the nice all of the body underneath it's quite exciting actually to see what you find sometimes on these old Squires you get a good quality three-piece on the body sometimes it's a five piece seven [Music] I haven't really found a tool that can finish off the curves in the tight spots without miss shaping them sir I use regular sun paper and nice that really does take a long time but it works well and you know you just got to get on with it you get the fun bits later so next up we've got to take the finish off the headstock and it doesn't look like the finish on there but there is some sort of sanding sealer it's quite thick actually so what we'll do is we'll put a bit of nitrous over us I'm not just a nice thin finish lever or the neck resonator and the next thing to do is to fill the extra string tree hole I don't know why friend to put those on there really and I don't think it's all unnecessary plenty of string tension there to keep this dream is in the nut I'm gonna use a it's a toothpick and some wood glue I keep a lot of these around I can i buy them in bulk really I use like they're come in really handy filling the tiny holes as you can imagine there's a 62 strut headstock that's what we're trying to achieve now and to get that we're gonna start with some wood die and what I'm using here is just a bit of coffee a bit of turmeric and some wood stain mixed together and to try and achieve that look it doesn't look all that great there but it was bare with me here that's not the finished article by any means now what I'm gonna do is I want to sand the middle and Sunday just just to give it an unevenness to the patina and I think that's something that you'd find on a genuine vintage instrument it kinda creates an almost like a sunburst looked to the headstock if you were to just use the patented nitro straight away without doing any prep work I think what you usually find then is it ends up looking like a reissue not like a relic and not like a vintage instrument at all so here's the tinted glass anyway now that I've created like I said some evenness to the partner I go ahead and shoot it with a bit of Nitra I put a couple of coats on and I do a bit of pre relic II and I suppose and just by knocking it around on the driveway to create a few dings and to remove a bit of lacquer from the edges like you probably see when the guitar might have hit maybe a ride cymbal or the corner of an amp on stage or whether first thing to do here was to the level of fret there were flat sections in the middle of the frets although for they hadn't been crowned properly and what this can do is it can create problems with the international attorney because if you think about it the center of the fret is now buying in the middle of that flat spot there is no peak to the fret so the notes either gonna sound slightly sharp so no dice so it's time to check the net for stress tweak the truss rod until it was bang on and then proceeded to market with a sharpie this is helpful in seeing how much material you're removing as you and your levelling beam across the top just as determine where your low frets are as they will return the Sharpie lines so once I leveled it I marked the frets once again and I filed them so there was maybe a sort of one millimeter peak at the top of the frets before I polished them off which which start runs them off so now it's time to go about replacing that old stock nut that we broke getting out I would have replaced anyway with the bleach bone or Tuscan or something and Here I am using beached bone I'm just using air Blanka batbot i measured the radius of the bottom of the notes slot because on Fender guitars the nuts curved at the bottom to match the radius of the fretboard it makes the trap slightly harder but it's not possible I just used my radius gage to draw a line across the bone of blank and that's the material to be removed to create the curve at the bottom and I've just used the belt sander to do to achieve that that does the job pretty effectively and I used stray edge led across the frets to them engage the height of the first fret use my fila gauges and then what I do is I bend the feeler gauges across the fretboard and mark with a pencil on the line on the new nut and that's the line to file to and once I found my new lips lost they will be the same height as the frets that should make for optimum playability so let's install the new nut I made sure when I think you stick that it was a nice tight fit and that should improve the transferring of resonance through the neck and improve the tone I'm pretty happy with that it's very well and the next thing we need to do is to install the new tuners and I'm using wilkinson cruising style for that vintage look and I found that they're very quality as well so the new ferial Zin here's before picture and after I'm pretty happy with that so far anyway so let's crack up back to our body strip till it's finished and as you can see here I've just like the scratch marks on the contours is that it's gonna be covered in black anyway I'm using a clear and applause here just to create the center of the Sun blast you'll notice I'm not wearing a mask which is pretty an advisor bhun really boots I hold my breath for the entire duration of this prayer and then I quickly scamper away to breathe and that works fine but I will be invested in a proper vapor respirator at some point soon as the fumes from nitrocellulose and exactly known for their pleasant for the black around the edges that is quite a template both sides of the strut and then I'm making it slightly smaller and that leaves a gap around the edge which is gonna be covered in order nitrocellulose black gloss so the only box I could find anywhere on earth was this wonderful lots of lacquer in it no no it's done John the strap that this line was very prominent grow from black to red I'm sorry ass like food was necessary and up next I use the cherry red transparent gloss and this creates the fair between the black and the amber that you see on the three-tails almost so here i'm reattaching the pickguard just to get a gauge for where to begin the rounded process i've also removed the finish from the back of the neck focusing on the areas of play where that usually exists on the contagiousness augustus completely remove the finish in fact quite a few cuts light oak stain and gives it a gray look that it comes from the oils from you freehand dirt and grime get in there and that seems to replicate it pretty well and I'm also finding various blunt instruments around the house different sharpness and adjacent and this is to Chris I'll random lock to the dents that I'm putting in the ends of the headstock from my own experience of being on the road and entering with burns your head stalks get a bit of abuse from ride cymbals and box of amps and just generally dropping them on things so I'm gonna begin reading the hard way and I'm gonna remove the made in China engraving from the back of the note glass it's using the belt sander then I'll bring it back up to a sort of brushed steel look with fine sandpaper using the opulent sander so to Relic the hardware I'm just using patio cleaner which is a hydrochloric acid solution brick acid works as well any muriatic acid all right justified now a word of warning here this stuff is evil don't get on your skin and don't breathe in the fumes and by Jove don't get in your eyes how I achieve the look is to put the acid in a large container before flirting with hard-wearing in the acid in a smaller plastic container then I make the whole thing airtight I'd like in the experience to a few of the ferry trips I've been on over the years after leaving it for a few hours I removed the lid making absolutely sure not to breathe him as I do so else you be stripped of your very soul or at least your nostril hair and there we have it what was once a set of nice new shiny guitar parts now looks like it was salvaged from the Mary rails so mission accomplished so next it's time to start reading the body I'm just using a Stanley knife blade here and an orbital sander just to give myself a rough guide as to where I need to start relic II what I'm using to do the actual relic work is mainly just very sharp implements Stanley knife blades and I found leather working tools that work really well and because you find that over the years and nitrocellulose finished it doesn't have that sanded lock it the chips and it cracks a lot of people put the bodies in a freezer and use a sort of freeze thaw method where the weather camera then expands and contracts and creates small crack lines now here's a quick picture of how not to do it I'm picked this Stratocaster it's a secondhand shop for the raw 50 quid I'm not it's dreadful you can't really Poli he can't really polyester it's not really possible I mean obviously you can't but it looks dreadful and you Sunday he has this sort of swirly effect and it's too smooth it's too it's too hard so I wouldn't try we're looking Polly he just doesn't look good [Music] I was finding any pictures awkward online of John Stratus to try and make it as close as I could it's not exactly the same way patent but without having his actual strats always gonna be a bit of a struggle so if you're watching this John just pop you Australian edge if you back and send it over the pond to me I'll return it so I used a variety of different stances I went along and oak stand seems to give that desired gray the aged look I also used some yellow food coloring around the weapon because when you observe John struck closely you'll see that it's fair did through the layer of paint to yellow at the edges and the yellows remain and now I believe that's because the bodies were actually dyed that yellow color in the middle of the Sunburst or at least that's what I've read on this interweb that great bastian of accuracy now I'm using little leatherworking gouges just to mimic the chips on John's body along with fine sandpaper my Stanley knife just a good job of emulating those hairline cracks that often farmer aren't any chips in nitro cellulous so next it was time to fit the new wilkinson home a steel bridge although it was a six point tram system like the original it didn't quite fit so I had to fill the old holes with some dowels and walk blue and then read drill but I'm gonna be honest with you but said it didn't quite get it right the first time the high felt just a little bit too close to the edge of the board's to do it a second time it was well worth it in the end the quality is lightyears ahead of the original Squires Inc trim system of his thing was so light and flimsy so it should improve the tongue so next it was time to finish the we're above the pink cat and this weapon is quite extreme but it's also a hallmark of drums strap so it was important to get this right I presume there's so much where they're just as a result of years of aggressive strumming we know they played a lot of funk roofs with a reasonably heavy pick so that probably explain why there's so much wear in that area so yeah once I finish try licking the back of the body I could begin putting it back together I got rid of the plastic trim in the neck and I made a an angled shim out of hard wood just to maximise resonance and when I put it back together in a set it off wow it's a really nice guitar know I've learned all manner strats and Custom Shop to American Standard classic farms these PT navigators and what have you and this thing so there was a very best for me and I'm not saying that just because I set it up I really couldn't be happier with how it's turned out and I'm gonna be keeping this thing forever so anyway [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Wilson Guitars

Views: 773,017

Keywords: Mod Shop, guitar mod, strat mod, frusciante strat, 1962 stratocaster, custom shop strat, squier mod, squier modification, squier upgrade, upgraded squier, squier

Id: fZRYuAvlGi0

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020