Pink1 and 002BA Progress

Project Pink1 and 002BA (details on oo1BA here ) are underway. If you are aware of what the “black1″ is then this will make more sense to you. I made a prototype strat a while ago out of an old (80′s) Fender USA strabody and 40′th aniversay strat neck, with some custom wound pickups from Bare Knuckle Pickups. The project was to make a less harsh strat and experiment a little with sounds, setups and playability on the strat. it was a big sucess to me, and my guitar tech really liked it too as a strat, different from the norm and very playable. Taking what I learnt from that, with a bit more thought I decided to make a next generation model which for reasons which will become clear in a minute is called “pink1″. A big part of the features of the prototype partsocaster nick named MDJM was based on a sound from John Mayer’s custom shop stratocaster “black1″, and some of the parts for pink one have been taken from a John Mayer signature strat, in this case the neck. I pickedup a John Mayer 2009 Fender signature stratocaster neck for a snippet of the price, which has a nice C shape profile which I like on it. It’s currently had the laquer removed from it which I now do as a matter of personal taste, despite the think satin laquer on it. This neck has a nice African Rosewood board on it and the longer string tree placement, so should suit me perfectly and fix a few of the issues I had with the MDJM. The body has been found from a another 1982 alder stratocaster body which is a great lump of wood, and I’ve found a 1972 USA Fender trem unit. That’s where that currently sits at the moment.

001BA was a telecater project I wanted to build, initially I wanted it to come direct from Fender, or even the custom shop, but from what I wanted (telecater with a minibucker neck pickup and rosewood board) didn’t exist from Fender, and the custom shop price for these minor alternations was crazy high.   002BA is another telecater project in the same style, I wanted a slightly different sounding telecater and found the La Cabronita telecaster from the Fender custom shop, however this is £5000, and for what it is, well, it’s a lot of money. Plus I wanted a two pickup version rather than their standard one, so 002BA will be my own take on a custom shop telecaster and it certainly won’t cost £5000. Wroking with a luthier we’ve selected body wood (alder) and working out some template patterns for shape and layout. It’s very early yet, but it is moving.