Seeing as how this town I live in is said to be the 'Live Music Capitol of the World' I figured I'd embark on a new goal to learn to play guitar well enough to eventually join a band and screw around playing in some of the bars downtown.
I've played on and off through the years, but always let distractions or excuses get in the way. Now that I'm a little older *nock on wood* I think I've got the discipline to stick with it. Previously I'd bought fancier guitars in the hopes that with a nicer guitar I'd want to play it more often... This time I went a different and I think more interesting route.
I bought a Squire Stratocaster off Craigslist for $40. There wasn't anything wrong with it, it just had sat in a closet for years. It was in an HSS configuration, so I stripped the pickups out of it and enlarged the neck pickup cut out in the scratch plate, and wired up a couple Seymour Duncan humbuckers I also got off craigslist. There's a '59 in the neck and an Invader in the bridge position. Stock single coil is in the middle until I buy a hot rail or something to replace it. Just a five way switch for now but I plan on upgrading to a super switch later on for coil tapping fun. Currently configured with dual capacitors (orange drops).
I took a good bit of time this weekend learning how to set up the guitar.... I checked the neck for straightness, soaked it down with some badly needed lemon oil, set the tremelo height, did the rough intonation, dropped the string height way down from how ridiculously high it was... readjusted the trem BC of how off the string height was, set the pickup height and then did the fine intonation.... This whole process was cool to me because it has allowed me to really get to know my guitar inside and out.
After I was done with all the shenannigans I came here and signed up so I can figure out how to play this thing. I'm looking forward to it, and looking forward to getting to know all of you as well.
All the best,
Steve
