Upgrading your guitar, especially a stratocaster, telecaster or les paul model, isn’t too difficult. You can buy complete kits for it, or just put in some new pickups yourself. A few years ago I build a stratocaster from material left over from other guitar kits. I “painted” it by mixing ink and water and rub it into the wood. After that I sprayed clear lacquer over the body and put oil on the neck.

For some years I hardly played on it. It is a nice guitar and it plays very well, it has, for example, a very low action, I already had a stratocaster (Fender Starcaster) though. Some time ago I bought a “mini humbucker” from Geek (or eBay, I’m not sure). Anyway, I spend almost nothing on it. To see if it was any good, I put it into my DIY stratocaster.

Here’s the now upgraded and finished guitar. I love how it looks and how it plays. Even though the mini humbucker or ‘hotrod’ doesn’t turn out that good. Combined with the middle pickup it does give a nice ‘growl’ especially if you use some overdrive or distortion on your amp.

PICTURES

VIDEO

In the video below you can hear how the guitar sounds now. I played it over my Fame (Fender copy) amp, with a touch of reverb on it and I go trough all the positions with the selector.