So having Bling the Gold Strat hanging on the wall of the workshop as a decoy was too much of a temptation and there was lots of tweaking and fiddling going on, and it has now become quite a nice sounding player, even with its 7 quid Chinese pickups - the most expensive thing on it is the paint but I would hate to see anything happen to it. So it was time to build a new one from parts that were hanging around.
In the Box of assorted bits that had the Accidental Telecaster in it, there was a body and a neck - they didn't quite fit together, so a bit of judicious work with a Router on the neck pocket, and some shaping on the heel of the neck itself, pulling them more in line with standard specs and they slotted together nicely. Suspect this one was originally a planned build as the parts came together but got abandoned along the way.
The Scratch plate was the original one as its not quite a "real" body (surprise surprise) and a bit angular - was slightly tempted to strip and relic it and give it a proper contour shape but that can keep for a while and maybe that comes later. The middle and neck pickups are an odd mexican pair that came from tortoise shell Strat as I had acquired a pair of 57/62 to go on it and the bridge pickup was in another box of Epiphone pickups that i picked up on ebay with all the wires cut off. So a bit of braided cable and a magnet reverse to pull it all in phase and I was away.
Overall a fairly pleasing result for scrap bits lying around, and I wonder if its going to go the same way as Bling....................