So while i'm waiting for Micheal to weave his magic over in Texas and having run out of Tele bits to play with, I go back to Strats. Now to do what I needed to do overall, I realised that I was going to have to get involved in a bunch of routing, somewhat more accurate than my initial attempts on the Nashville, and then finishes, but i didn't want to get lost in becoming a spray shop. So I needed another technique that suited my temperament (what do you mean I have to leave it to dry)
I had picked up this Strat body on ebay, and as it turns out it was from one of the Woodroffe clan, whose Music store I used to go hang out in in Birmingham when I was a kid (that annoying kid - hey mister how much is that? Can I have a go on it?) The salesman I plagued was one Chris Dunn who was the bass player in one of the city's breaking acts City Boy (5705) who I ultimately worked for and toured the US with back at the end of the 70's opening for Hall and Oates, Kansas, Rush etc and opened my eyes terminally to the possibilities that a mis-spent youth could bring in Rock n Roll .
Now Fast Eddie's Strat with Motorhead, that I looked after on a daily basis on the road for 4 years, was stripped to the bare wood and the only finish was Linseed oil and a lot of polish. That guitar also left me with an ingrained love of the overall effect of polished wood and brass on a guitar. So I thought let's do a remake of that guitar and see what we get. I had previously done the build on Eddie's second Strat which started life as a large head stock blue Strat, till I went mad one night with a power sander in a Holiday Inn bathroom in Bristol and took the paint off it, oiled it, and filed out a brass scratchplate for a Dimarzio SDS and had it on stage the next day still drying under the lights. This one is taking a bit longer.
Now I can actually date this picture as being at an Open air Festival in Nuremberg back in August of '81 with Motorhead and Foreigner, which was notable for two things. It was the loudest I had ever got Eddies guitar to go (Class A Phase Linears and Marshalls make a lovely combination when you strip out the front ends can get it all in phase) and secondly I met a lovely Tshirt girl called Kookie doing the merchandising who I am still with to this day.