Siena's Stratocaster - It's Finished!

I finally got the stratocaster polished and assembled today. Gotta say it looks awesome. I was able to achieve a mirror finish using my Colortone polishing compounds, and since i did a mock build right at the beginning of the project, everything went together very easily without any mishaps or scratches.

After adding some copper foil to overlap the edges of the pickup cavity (so it could contact the shielding on the back of the pickguard), the only thing left to do in terms of electrics was to ground the cavity shielding to the back of the volume pot, solder the ground wire to the back of the tremolo hook, and solder the output jack. I had a few tense moments during which the output jack kept grounding out, but a bit of heat-shrink insulation sorted it out.

Despite being the one of the cheapest kits on the market, this strat plays really nicely and sounds oh-so sweet. The full range of strat tones are there, and it was made to cry the blues. This build was for my niece Siena, and I gotta say I will be sad to see it go. It looks so nice hanging on my wall right now! Obviously the thing to do is build one for myself. Yes. I must. The colour in real life is a lot more aqua than it appears in the photos. It is weird how much the camera's flash brings out the green, but if i don't use the flash the colour looks blue!

If you've been thinking of building a kit, then the Stratocaster kit from your online supplier of choice is a great place to start. These kits are cheap, there's minimal wiring to be done, and the finished product looks good, sounds good, and is a pleasure to play. Come on, you know you want to!

Rock on. \m/ \m/