Fender Strat Starcaster Guitar Mod Project

00:00 - lights, camera, action
00:04 - intro
01:25 - in search of intonation
02:23 - tear down
03:25 - neck review
05:05 - truss rod adjustment
05:32 - re-radius the board
08:20 - the downside
10:10 - a solution is hatched

Fingerboard Radius Fixture Video:
[ Ссылка ]

PDF Download Link:
[ Ссылка ]

We’re going to kick off a Fender “Strat” Starcaster mod project series.
There isn’t much of a plan for this project, other than to turn a very cheap (affordable) guitar, into a pretty nice guitar.

At a glance, this gently used Strat looks pretty good, a little unloved, but pretty good.
It is a maple on maple skunk stripe neck, which looks and feels good except for the razor sharp fret ends. The frets themselves show very little wear, and I’m now wondering if this guitar had gone to a tech for a “set up” as the frets really do look too nice to be cheap-factory. The tuners also look great, but are really bad. They don’t tune smoothly, loose then tight, some shoot past tune, then slop back… they have to go away.
The bridge is a 6-screw Strat style, which should be nice, but it is cranked down solid to the body, the tremolo arm snapped off in the block.
Lastly, we have the ceramic pickups, which all sound rather muddy to me, so they will get swapped for either hand-wound or some affordable alternative.

Time to start, the Next Project!

First to find intonation.
This may seem strange as I’ll be tearing the guitar apart anyway, but I want to verify if the bridge location will allow for proper intonation. All saddles needed extreme adjustments, and the G, A and E saddles were all maxed-out, moved all the way to the rear. The A and E both needed more adjustment yet, but it was clear the bridge (or neck) was in need of a placement adjustment.

Teardown time.
This was very easy as the guitar was in good condition other than being a little dirty. Once the pickguard and bridge were removed, more debris was found. Under the pick guard it was a manufacturer mess. Very rough routing, and buffing compound, rather sloppy overall, but covered by a pick guard so it was fine.
Maybe the biggest issue I noticed at this point was the neck pocket. I was strangely routed ( a manufacturing choice I’m guessing ), it was painted ( a manufacturing choice I’m guessing ), and also gouged out at the mating surface of the neck heal ( a craftsman issue I’m guessing ).
Hmm, I’m foreseeing some excavation in this area.

A look at the neck.
The neck looks and feel good, especially for a cheap guitar, but the issues I’ve already noted are only on the surface. There’s more. I checked the trussrod and adjusted the fingerboard flat, seemed to work Okay, but I’m thinking this is an old style single action rod…hmm.
Then I checked the fingerboard radius, WOW, very odd, it was 9, 10, 9-ish, 11-ish, 10-ish, 11-ish…
Meandering the entire length of the board. Very odd. This has been on my mind for some time now, and I’m guessing that every possible issue may have been at play. Wood choice, moisture, hand prep, wood grain, maybe the devil too.

Re radius
The neck was stuck to my radius fixture and an initial pass was taken. At first I was thrilled by how easy the surface was cleaning up. The bass side of the neck was flat and flawless (mostly), but once I moved past the center line of fret markers into the treble side of the neck, things went downhill.
The neck appeared to have a hump in it, from the 3rd to 9th frets (roughly), then drop off from the 12th to 21st frets. A warped neck? I don’t really think it’s warped, as the heel and the back of the headstock are on the same plane, very flat across that surface…hmm.
A second “deep” pass was calculated and brought the entire surface of the fingerboard to a uniform radius. Sadly, I had to take ±.025” off the top. That is way more than I was hoping/expecting. It is what it is.

The Downside
I was so focused on just cleaning up the radius, and not expecting it to take so much material, that I completely ignored the side marker dots. Overall, there wasn’t an issue, but the 5th and 7th side dot were not in line with all the other (of course they weren’t). The were closer to the surface of the board.
So, not to fix that issue.
I thought of a number of “fixes” and chose to use some scrap maple strips as binding.
To do this I routed a 1/16” wide by the depth of the fingerboard ledge along each side of the fingerboard. Prepped and glued the new maple strips in place and with some luck this will result in a nice save to the issue and offer blind fret ends. So, the problem may have a happy outcome.

Thanks for watching and I hope you’ve enjoyed the project so far.
We will be addressing and correcting a number of other issues in the upcoming episodes, we are in this together, as I don’t know what the plan is - yet.

Take care!

#fender #stratocaster #starcaster

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