Building my dream MIA Strat under €700 Part I. - Purchasing Phase
A three-decade dream is nearing its fulfillment in my life: by the time I'm forty, i.e. this August I will have assembled a Fender Stratocaster (or Partscaster) mostly made up of American parts.
For a musician who grew up in an age and place where and when I did (let us call it post-communism), The Strat, especially Jimi's Strat embodied the American Dream. But as we grow up, we often lose the ability to dream and the will to make it happen. By the time I got where I could afford a new or used Fender American Stratocaster I became unable to justify the expense.
This is when I ran into (and deliberately ignored) an ad in the classifieds section of gsfanatic.com of an original Fender 2013 new old stock (NOS) Mystic Red Stratocaster lefty body (like this one here) offered at HUF49k - €153 or $172 at the current FX rate.
So the idea of building myself a lefty Strat just entered my mind and I stepped onto the perilous path. Haggled 10% off the offering price from the very kind NOS musical instrument trader Csaba at deltahangszer.hu and started looking for the other parts. The same guy was selling on the same platform a set of Seymour Duncan Livewire II pickups (complete with pots, jack and wiring), of course above my spending limit, but was kind enough to make me an offer I could not refuse at €112/$126 in our package deal.
Now the bottom part was almost complete (on paper), leaving the question of the top open. I sadly realized that no matter how substantial savings I made on these parts, it is the neck that makes a Fender an expensive instrument. Should I settle for a Squier neck, or even a Chinese CNC-machined noname replacement parts from AliExpress?
HELL NO! EITHER A REAL STRAT FOR ME, OR NOTHING!
Thus started I my quest for the neck, sweating heavily to see the prices. What I wanted was 22 frets, maple fretboard with plenty of life left in the frets, preferably including tuning machines and righty for that reversed headstock Hendrix vibe (and availability). U.S. deals were out of question, 30% of VAT and customs would make my expenditure unjustifiable. On to Ebay - I made bids in France and the U.K. to learn that these fuckers cost around €/£280 used! I almost settled for a made in Mexico neck at a bargain on reverb.com, but it was luckily snatched from under my crooked nose while I was haggling and building trust with the seller (who turned out to be quite a great guy, and a fine fellow musician). So back to square one, ain't Karma a bitch, whatever.
Long story short, Mr Barrada of Music Store Geneva was very generous, understanding, flexible and sold me not only the neck, but also the original neckplate, screws and jackplate at a bargain of €295 shipped; from a damaged guitar he disassembled and parted out. I shall always be grateful to him. (Did I know that Switzerland is outside the EU's VAT and customs treaty? Hell no, and neither did I know that in Geneva, France is luckily just the other side of the street at certain places. Karma's not such a bad bitch after all!)
So, why is that neckplate important?
Well, for nothing else than giving this Strat build its real identity (and an excuse for me to buy and assemble it - her). A resurrection of a 40th anniversary model for my 40th birthday, a 25-year-old neck from 1994, the advent of the wildest of my teenage years, something old, something new, something borrowed and something blues... to seal my lifelong relationship with music. Like it says: 40 Years ...and still rockin', possibly the motto for my twenty-five years to come to help me combat the impending male menopause, mid-life crisis and prostate checkups.
The tremolo assembly came from the U.K., made by Sung Il in South Korea (greetings to my ex, Jung Hee there), who produce licensed Wilkinson parts, possibly not a downgrade from the original Strat part at a fraction of the price - €50 shipped. This and the plastics (pickguard, knobs, cavity plate - on their way from China to arrive in May or June, like a kind of tantric extended foreplay) are where I could not justify the cost of American parts.
Now my dream Strat is in a state of temporary assembly, she already plays and sounds acceptable even with guts hanging out from under a cardboard pickguard, with a shitty nut (will cut my own from cattle bone when I have the time), returns to pitch after heavy tremolo use - all in all a very promising piece of equipment, a dream not turning into nightmare!
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| Current state |
Stay tuned for the post on final assembly with videos, sound tests and the launch of my educative and entertaining Youtube channel!
From Hungary with love,
BLC
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