Not your daddy's Stratotone... THE SEQUEL!!

[Michael Ambrose]

Actually... I lied. This is actually my third Stratotone rebuild.

It seriously kills me to find gutted Stratotone bodies and necks on Ebay... I'd never have the heart to gut one myself... and as much as I'd love to just buy a stockpile of Hersey bar pickups and do a purist restoration, the one pickup is going for the price of a body and neck together these days!

FORTUNATELY there are lots of OTHER DeArmond pickups out there... as well as some awesome vintage parts to be had for cheap!

The '61 Stratotone project... done up Les Paul Jr stylee!! '61 Stratotone body & neck.. '61 DeArmond pickup... '61-ish Bigsby B3 vibrato... fresh aluminum flat-top bridge, Kluson Keystone tuners, Alpha pots, VINTAGE Sprague tone cap (thanks to my grandfather), CUSTOM cut pickguard.

Sexy? Oh yes.

[VintAxe]

Sexy indeed Michael

I bet your restorations play and sound better than most originals anyway.

Are you cutting your own pickguards?

What's the story on the Sprague caps and your Grandfather?

My paternal Grandfather (whom I loved dearly) left me large quantities of shotguns and fishing gear. Not one guitar or guitar part in the estate.

[Michael Ambrose]

[johnnyb]

hey, your stratotones are sweet. does the type of tone caps really make a difference even if you usually play with the pots on full? i could see if one was a strict jazz player that different rated capacitors would be a preference. but the brand? i just havent brought myself to spend the extra dough on pricier ones to check it out. also, are there any issues of putting an archtop bigsby on a flat top guitar. and last, the pickguard looks pretty good. but i found that making a posterboard template first and using toothpicks to line up the holes so its dead on is helpful. then transferring that to a piece of plywood, double stick tape the pickguard material to that and let er rip with the router. (i prefer a table router). use the posterboard template to mark the screw holes and its a sure fit every time. theres a bit of prep, but the actual cut is only 30 second to a minute and no worries of screwing up a $35 piece of blank. you probably have your own method, but maybe some of this may be helpful. are you unloading any of those 6v6 or 12ax7s? i have a 67 bassman head that i had to replace the old rca's that were in it, and it has never sounded the same.

[cheepaxes]

For some reason I've been really attracted to Stratotones lately and contemplating picking up a body to see if if it would fit a neck I have. Two things prevent me: 1) they usually end up going for more than I care to pay and 2) I don't want to end up bidding against Michael for them. :)

-Scott