Cato's "making of a copy of Jay's strat" blog

[Matt White]

Excellent

can't wait to see the finished axe

[Cato]

this corner is a bit squarish.



so making it round

[Cato]

"bridge positioning"

I did it like this

[ELVIS]

Wow, I know my next purchase...

A Callahan bridge, that is, if a lefty version is available...

I'd heard of them but never paid any attention...

Thanks jhale...


And Cato, my buddy, my pal...

Keep sanding that baby...

[ELVIS]

Callaham!

With an M

[ELVIS]

Well, i've sent them an email...

There's no lefty information on their website...

Callaham Guitars

[Diamondjimi]

Originally posted by rustoffa
Check this out. Pretty comprehensive explanation of building an x-pensive strat. It goes on forever...keep scrolling down. I guess he left out the part where he smoked alot of reefer.


http://patsguitars.com/brownie.htm

That's quite the big ta do about one guitar.

Keepin it true to Claptons ,he should've gone with a 21 fret neck..

Id take any one of Jhale's strats over that one , any day....

[jhale667]

Originally posted by diamondjimi
That's quite the big ta do about one guitar.

Keepin it true to Claptons ,he should've gone with a 21 fret neck..

Id take any one of Jhale's strats over that one , any day....

Thank you, kind sir.

[rustoffa]

Originally posted by jhale667
...I gave that a quick read through and I'll say one thing: The dude's using a Callaham bridge, he is not fucking around...they kick ass!

This friend of mine sold that dude an amp. He sent me the link to that dude's site awhile back....it took me awhile to find it. Anyway, my friend said the fucker was weird, and I should probably ask him if he wanted to buy my piece-of-shit Danelectro.

[jhale667]

Originally posted by ELVIS
Wow, I know my next purchase...

A Callahan bridge, that is, if a lefty version is available...

I'd heard of them but never paid any attention...

Thanks jhale...


And Cato, my buddy, my pal...

Keep sanding that baby...

Not sure if they do leftys, but they are weighty, meaty bridges...the trem arm feels great, and they sound excellent. I put one on my friend's '73 Strat and it was like night and day. I've got Fender American vintage bridges on mine, and though I love them, were I ever to build my dream tone-beast (which will be an ash bodied two-tone sunburst relic'ed all to hell ala SRV w/an Ebony Fretboard) it's gonna have one of those....

[ELVIS]

Check out their replacement saddles for AM Standard...

[jhale667]

Originally posted by ELVIS
Check out their replacement saddles for AM Standard...

Nice. If I had an American Standard bridge I would swap those out in a heartbeat! I prefer the vintage 'S'-saddle. The Fender American Vintage one is pretty hefty too, as compared to the Mexi-"vintage" bridge, which feels as though it could blow away in a strong wind...they suuuuuuuuuuck......

[Cato]

this neck has thin frets that I don't like. so I decided to change them to the bigger ones.




these are the tools I use at this process







pulling them out




all done

[Cato]

next I do hit the new frets in the neck. this is the most important job at guitar building. so I asked my kitty to do it.






good job Cherry!

[Cato]

cutting off the frets sticking out of the neck.



and filing the edge



almost done.