Strat Project - Home
Here is a project we had been wanting to do for some time - to build a custom electric guitar. We started playing electric back in the early 60's during high school (see a short history of our high school band here). We built our first guitar out of 3 layers of plywood, and an old classical guitar neck we found at the dump.
We later "upgraded" our plywood guitar with a Hagstrom neck and a real DeArmand pickup we got at a music store. Later on, we made a different body out of pine (see picture here). Our bass player went off to college, so his brother took over, and got a real bass guitar.
Our sax friend got a cheap electric 6-string, and he loaned it to us for a while. We eventually bought a second hand Hagstrom 12-string, and used it mostly as a 6-string. We had a lot of fun back then!
In the early '70's, someone found a '60's Tiesco guitar in the trash and gave it to us. We still have that, and still use it sometimes. Unfortunately, back then, we didn't like the blue sparkle finish, and spray painted it (after trying to sand it down, only to discover it was plywood) with some paint that did not like the original paint (this was in the 70s - it is still a bit sticky to this day). Little did I know then that they would become somewhat of a collector's item - apparently Ry Cooder uses one.
When we got back together for our 30th reunion in 1998, we bought a Godin SD, which we still have today. A nice guitar with a nice neck, but not quite the pickup arraignment we were looking for. See here for a picture with the Godin (me at far left - really can't see it) and the Tiesco (our rhythm player in a yellow shirt is using it).
So, we really don't NEED another guitar, but...