1954 Stratocaster, real, replica, details, fakes and famous.

Eagle said:
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Smaller player wear copied from vintage instruments but with 55090 SS frets
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Nice pickup set.
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A good fit in the neck pocket and by good I mean fits like a piston with enough room to accommodate the finish on the neck. Not tight enough to crack the lacquer due to seasonal changes.
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What do you use to darken the fingerboard wear? Seems my fingers clean the bare wood more than it does dirty it up, I’ve rubbed both graphite and ash into a couple spots to see how it held up and within an hour of playing it was gone.
 
DrewJD82 said:
What do you use to darken the fingerboard wear? Seems my fingers clean the bare wood more than it does dirty it up, I’ve rubbed both graphite and ash into a couple spots to see how it held up and within an hour of playing it was gone.
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Dilute black dye but diluted a lot and applied sparingly in multiple applications. This is how Fender custom shop do it.
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This is a master built . Not terrible like this one (also master builder;
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1500 wet sand and hand buff done for now. I need a week for the paint to harden before I can do anything else.
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Gentle discolouration in the clear coat to try and match this kind of thing;
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It’s a bit weird painting neck pockets but all 50s fenders are.
I think I got the colour reasonably like that one (my aim) not that it makes that much difference because the range of variations on white blond is huge.
 
Backs tend to be less opaque in the original ones for some reason, possibly due to the front being painted a bit more carefully and that resulting in more paint slightly. The amount of wood grain you can see in old ones is usually far less than custom shop reissues and actually quite a different look. I like the way the custom shop do it but I am going for accuracy with this one.
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They tend not to be more sold on the edge like originals.
 
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@Eagle
Have you tried using a dark wax to mimic some aging, especially in the areas of chips/exposed wood?
I've used it a lot in furniture projects, but only slightly dabbled with it for guitars. I think it works well but didn't know if this was something you've tried before.
 
FuzzyAce said:
@Eagle
Have you tried using a dark wax to mimic some aging, especially in the areas of chips/exposed wood?
I've used it a lot in furniture projects, but only slightly dabbled with it for guitars. I think it works well but didn't know if this was something you've tried before.
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That is that.
 
And for now;
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No doubt I will revisit it in a few weeks/months and work on the finer details but it basically looks like the reference I posted above and sounds pretty good. Is it that different from the original body ?
No but I am a lot happier with it.
 
DrewJD82 said:
If I ever decide to do up my own 0001 Strat, I’d probably go full tilt and hire you to do the finishing work.

This is one of my favorite threads on this forum!
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Shipping stuff backwards and forwards is getting very expensive .
 
Saw this today;
One of the worst fenders relics I have seen.
A few years old though and they are better now.
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ridiculous wear pattern and the head shape is wrong.
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Just Nash worthy.
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Lazy BS .
 
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