Fleetwood strat
Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2022 7:15 pm
Over on this thread (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=541&p=4669) I talked about the Fleetwood guitar I picked up at the thrift store last year.
I've since done a bunch more work on it:
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I've since done a bunch more work on it:
- Filed the fret ends - as always, older guitars have this problem in Calgary because of the lack of humidity.
- Filed the nut ends - they were protruding perhaps 0.25mm because of the fingerboard shrinkage.
- Cleaned the gunk out of the rosewood fretboard. I thought it was clean, but no... Used "000" grade steel wool and isopropyl alcohol, then lemon oil to condition it. The rosewood grain is beautiful (can't really see that in the pic).
- Cleaned everything while it was all apart.
- Adjusted the trem springs a little so the back of the bridge plate was just touching the body. Holds tune adjusted like that.
- Found that the Fleetwood pickups are too microphonic... They are the weak link in the guitar. So installed an old DiMarzio DP404 single-coil-sized humbucker in the bridge position, and a couple of American Standard pickups I had left over from another pickup swap in the middle and neck positions.
- Replaced the saddle height screws with shorter ones that don't stick out of the saddles (no more fingers catching on them).
- Redid the intonation now that I have the Turbo Tuner.
- Ordered a new tremolo cover plate for the back of the guitar to replace the one that someone heavy-handed had cracked overtightening the screws sometime in the past.
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