Knotty Pine Offset Barncaster Project, Part 1: A Solid Body Acoustic

It's time for a change - up to now this nicely aged 29 year old 1991 MIM Stratocaster neck has been on the original '91 Strat, and then a 1995 MIJ Fender '57 reissue Stratocaster body. It looks pretty cool in the above photo, attached to a lightweight rustic rough cut reclaimed pine Jazzcaster / Telemaster / Offset Telecaster body from NoMoonLaser in Omaha, Nebraska.

For a while now, there's been a small pile of assorted Tele parts in a bin out in the Alley Gadget Shop garage work area disaster zone, and it seemed like a good time to see what interesting creation we can come up with. In the above photo, besides the neck, there's a Fender Vintage series bridge plate, a Fender '62 model bridge pickup, Wilkinson compensated brass saddles, Fender strap buttons, and an Allparts Electrosocket output jack thingie - all brand spankin' new. Not so visible, on the back are Gotoh string through body ferrules and a Fender "F" neck plate. Also, new Fender Vintage tuning machines just got put on the headstock, using the previously installed Stew-Mac adapter bushings.

After screwing all that stuff down onto the pine body (with appropriately sized pilot holes drilled first), I strung it up with a "set" of new but odd left-over assorted gauge strings, aligned the neck with the bridge, set the action and tweaked the intonation.

Good enough to play, and I have - every day and night for a week now. No need to plug it in, the ultra resonant body on this guitar sounds great acoustically: loud, balanced, bright and snappy, with amazing sustain. After everything else gets installed and hooked up, there's no reason why it shouldn't have really fine electric tone too.

Here's a pile o' parts:

In the pic below are a Warmoth pickguard with a Fender Tex Mex Telecaster neck pickup, and a Fender Tele control plate with a Fender 3-way switch, a pair of CTS 250K potentiometers, and two Gotoh high knurl dome knobs, also all new stuff:

As you can see, the mounting holes haven't been drilled yet for the pickguard and control plate. It was getting late, there was barely enough light coming through the big window for a decent picture before dusk fell. Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

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For more about this Knotty Pine Offset Barncaster Project, see Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.