We Tried To "Custom Shop" The Cheapest Fender Strat

all right so we're here at righteous guitars again today we've got something uh pretty special planned and this was actually my friend ben calhoun's idea uh we're gonna take actually ben do you wanna explain what we're doing today yeah so we're gonna take the least expensive fender stratocaster you can get and we're going to tweak it mod it uh do a bunch of work to it and see how close to a custom shop product we get now part of this process is we're actually going to be keeping track of how much cost is involved with this so we're going to start with the actual retail price of the guitar and we're going to keep track of all of the parts and the labor and see how close we get in terms of price so you can have a good idea of whether or not this sort of thing would make sense for you in the long run so this is the guitar here fender player stratocaster so pretty basic it's an hss strat again this would be the least expensive actual fender guitar you could get okay there we go so player series is made in mexico correct it is yes okay let's play it without touching it no setup no nothing let's see how it feels [Music] so [Music] all right well initial thoughts it plays pretty terribly out of the box the action is quite high for me this is this is very very high this is higher than i would set up a slide guitar yeah it's very high uh also the saddles are not intimidating they're definitely not in today's frets i don't know what do you think about the fret ends um so it looks like they were beveled but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement there the edge of the fretboard is also very yeah it's not rounded at all pickups are okay they're not bad it sounds pretty good yeah i like the humbucker and typically i don't dig hss strats but this one actually sounds pretty good i will say i think the action being as it as it sits right now it's pretty difficult to play like yeah if i bought this guitar especially if i was like a newer player or a beginner this is not easy or fun to play no that's something to note too if you are buying a guitar whoever you buy it from should set the guitar up rarely they're gonna come to the box just great so how much work do you think this will need in terms of an hourly rate like shop rate for you guys how much do you think this is gonna cost we're gonna do some things that we don't normally get requests like rounding over the fingerboard not that big a deal but you can do a breakdown but parts and labor in the range of 800 900 probably okay it's a lot of work we're doing yeah but that would include all the parts as well so we're starting with the guitar it's about 800 850 bucks retail 850. we're putting another 800 into it give or take so we're around 1 600 1700 bucks for a guitar that hopefully by the end will be within striking range of a custom shop equivalent which started around dollars or something like that right okay and there are factors that we can't control like the weight it's a little heavy yeah it's a little heavy and that's just the wood that they used also poly instead of nitro it is poly so there are those few things that we really can't you know they're kind of variables we can't change so now we're going to take the guitar in here we're going to put it in plaque and we're going to do a full leveling crown on the guitar put a new nut on a new bone nut when it's out of there we're going to go through dress all these frets out dress the ends out really well polish everything up and then we'll go into final setup and should be rocking so what's it doing right now uh right now we're just doing an entry scan which will give us a roadmap of the guitar once we have a roadmap of the guitar we can see what areas we can improve on and how we can tweak it it's going to show us very quickly the trust runnings to be tightened what's interesting is it's actually not faster than doing it by hand a lot of people think that it's actually not faster but it does give you really good records and let you work in that really tight tolerance this is a side view of the guitar these are all your frets okay that's the 12th fret so forth the gray is the fingerboard and right now we're looking underneath the g string so if you were holding the guitar it would look like that right there's all your little frets that's the bridge saddles and the nut is over here so the red line is where it currently sits and the green line is what our settings are for it to be optimal and what we're looking there is the string height and the nut slot height and then traveling around here that's the plane of the fretboard under the g string so let's let's scan through here there's high e some real janky stuff up there uh b g d a and e so by looking at this instantly you can tell the truss rod needs to be tightened which will bring that like this got it and it'll make that a lot better but it'll be a lot better after we uh after we cut it'll be a lot nicer nice okay and that's it cool all right make this thing really good yeah not bad looking pretty clean yeah not too shabby that's a little questionable not bad and i'm gonna drop it all out it's got a super switch in it too so i guess they're doing a coil tap right there oh yeah you're right we're gonna do a different thing here [Music] old guts [Music] not bad you know i'm pretty impressed yeah looks like decent parts definitely seem worse so we're going to put a pair of lawlers uh these are blackface staggered blackface so the neck in the middle they'll get the classic strat sound um with the staggered pickup it's gonna be that old school not as balanced as a modern guitar but vintagey sounding right uh type of thing and then i really like duncan makes a pickup called the 59 trim bucker it's a really good time to pick up and i think that'll complement it so you'll have your classic strat and then your rock and roll up front i think it'll be a nice set all right there's our humbucker cap and then we're gonna have two different caps because this tone knob is gonna be for the bridge this tone will be for the neck in the middle this will split the bridge pick up but we'll add some resistors in too to help so these are all 500k pots we'll add resistance in so that we can make these 250k when you're on those pickups so it's going to be it's gonna be cool trick wiring setup all right wiring is done yeah pretty close just gonna have some grounding that looks really good that's fun yeah everything's green so yeah so whoever ends up having to work on this in the future yep you know you did them a great service so we have a push push pod over here and that's going to tap the humbucker i still have to add some resistors on there but that's going to tap that i have to add some resistors up here to modify the taper a little bit yeah the resistance but you've got your cap for your humbucker which will sound great and then you've got a cap for your single coils they need a little more of that roll off right so you'll have tone for bridge tone for middle and neck volume and then again the tap it should sound really good [Applause] june of 2022 nice new new all right so those fret ends we'll play with that first these uh edges how they're just really beveled and not not rounded at all right so we're gonna take care of that make it feel a little bit nicer so this is something that ideally if you're buying a custom shopping cart this is what they're doing from factory yeah you're gonna have a lot nicer fret work uh typically well almost every time you're gonna have a lot nicer fret work and attention to small things like this that you can always do it after the fact but it is nice just it doesn't take much work to really get them feeling great you know right just starting it you can see like there's a little roundness to it instead of that right so even feeling that and feel that oh yeah and we're going to make it nice of course but you know it doesn't take much to really improve that so the edge of the fingerboard is very sharp which can just doesn't feel great in your hand so we're going to roll the edges i'm going to do it a little bit differently than than i have before just because it's fun so we're going to go through and i'm actually going to do it by hand like this with a little razor and this is simulating essentially what happens with a vintage guitar right the more you play a guitar naturally your hands are going to wear the fingerboard edges and this is actually a big reason why i like a relic guitar when a guitar is aged it's not just an aesthetic thing it feels old it feels more broken in and a big part of that is the rolled fingerboard edges it's way more comfortable to play this is just roughed in right but feel right there and then feel right there oh yeah and we'll take it further than that right um but that'll make it where you play it and it's comfortable right because that feels okay that does not right like that i can you can actually see my finger like catching it yeah it doesn't over here so that'll be great so we'll finish the neck doing that um then we're gonna go to the back and we're actually going to it's already kind of a satin neck but we're going to do is basically hit it with a 3m pad and then we're going to put some pure carnauba wax on it let it dry wipe it off and it'll just make it feel slicker than this right it'll feel good okay so old nut this is what we'll replace it with i don't know what this is corian or something but all right so it's about a week and a half later it is okay yeah guitar is done your guitar is done indeed now we should point out that we are giving this guitar away yes so somebody will get to experience this in their hands so for more information on the giveaway righteous is hosting the giveaway i'll have a link in the description box down below where you can sign up and do all that stuff so take a look at the guitar absolutely cool so yeah we did a lot of stuff to it looks a little different yeah a little bit so i love the mint guard yeah it's just a better choice so everything that could be replaced besides the bridge tuning machines i guess the string tree and the backlight neck plate right everything else has been replaced it's expensive though yeah we'll uh let's go play it first and then we'll talk about costs yeah all right [Music] so [Music] boom [Music] bye [Music] okay it's so much easier to play yeah i agree i think i sound better on it right now i feel like i sound better i think so um i feel way more confident playing it and it's all this right here yeah that's the biggest impact is the feel i mean it sounds considerably better too yeah but being comfortable is the most important part so much more comfortable it's so subtle but when the the edge of the fretboard is not digging into your hand when the frets feel smooth and not gritty and grindy um it's the action is so much more approachable yeah it plays in tune better yeah it's intonated well and it's intonated well throughout the deck like it plays everywhere everywhere sounds good it doesn't have any dead spots uh it doesn't fret out when you bend right and that's not even considering the pickups i mean obviously the pickups are a step up in terms of i think just the sound of the guitar the most bang for your buck upgrade you can do agree are pickups but this rolling your fingerboard edges and rolling the fret ends rounding the fret ends that's what separates i've always said like fretwork nut work that's what separates the okay guitars from the really great ones so how much did this cost to do okay so the well the initial guitar was 850 at the end uh it's just over 1900 worth of work including the game so we're in this as this guitar sits right now for right under two grand 1919 okay and so change off the top of your head to get sort of an equivalent custom shop guitar where does that start i mean it's going to be close to four more than likely right and then you're getting up there now we get into the question of value because putting 300 worth of pickups in the guitar doesn't increase its value by 300 if at all if at all if at all and if you were gonna sell it you're you're better off pulling the pickups out selling them separately putting the stock stuff that's how you could get a little bit ahead by doing just that so at the end of the day this guitar plays great the things that i would take away from this are a guitar of any value it's worth i think doing the work on the neck here rolling the fingerboard edges if they're not rolled already addressing the fret ends doing a really great fret job and a really great setup does wonders for anybody yeah and the nut i mean that's that's one thing i always do is i put a bone nut on if a guitar doesn't come with a bone nut i always do the bow nut i'm with you on that so at the end of the day this is a killer guitar that i would never spend the money yeah dude i would never do this well think about it this way too though let's say i buy this guitar for 850. and i'm a gigging musician you know so i bought the guitar for 8.50 and a couple months later i've saved it up a bit and i can afford to go ahead and get a bone not put on a couple months later i've saved up a little more and i'm gonna afford to do a good level and crown on it and you know tweak the fret ends so that's where i think these become much more valid as you can work your way through it instead of an initial drop of two grand it could you could get there over two years and end up having a killer guitar that you keep forever that's been upgraded uh in bite size increments yeah swallowing it all at once is kind of insanity you know right and again like this is for the video you know we did this with the cheapest fender to see if you could custom shop one and i think the answer is no i don't think you can i don't think you can get a guitar like this to custom shop level because polyurethane finish the neck doesn't feel as good the it just doesn't feel like a custom shop quality instrument there are things in the custom shop that you just won't get that you're not going to get yeah like you know the weight of the guitar it's a little heavy now grant you're going to pay money it's to sort for lightweight cost money right custom shop it's a lot more money but you do get a lot more for what you pay and the guitar is going to hold its value it'll hold its value quite a bit better yeah so can you custom shop a mexican strat no but you can make a really really great guitar uh with with some work you can win this guitar we're doing a giveaway it's us only but it will show up shipping and everything is handled righteous is doing the giveaway so i'll have that linked down in the description box below uh thanks to bin thanks to righteous once again for taking the time to do this and uh yeah it was a lot of fun

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 435,045

Keywords: fender stratocaster, fender custom shop, guitar upgrade, fender, stratocaster, upgrade, guitar mod, fender mod, fender upgrade, pickup, righteous guitars, rhett shull, fender vs squier, vintage fender, gear review, custom shop

Id: _VLYiMeUIPk

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022