Fender Stratocaster

The Fesley Guitar is Finished!

A day late, but I have a few excuses. First off, because of the holiday weekend and I chose to stay home, a friend asked me to watch her dog while she went to her cottage. A big dog, so I couldn’t bring her to my house, so I was over there a few times each day to feed her and take her outside.

Secondly, I spent the little bit of free time to finish my kit guitar. Yes, after months of plodding along doing a little at a time each weekend, this weekend I put all of the hardware on, mounted the neck to the body, and did the whole set up. This was the Fesley Stratocaster kit I purchased back in May of 2024. I really didn’t start working on it until this past January, and had a few bumps in the road with finishing the body. The final finish has a distressed look with shades of light blue.

After putting the hardware on, which was relatively easy, especially with Fesley providing a thorough instruction manual, I got into the set-up, which I have always enjoyed doing with all of my guitars since I started playing over 40 years ago. For anyone starting off playing guitar or any other stringed instrument, you will never realize how important a good set-up is until it is performed. On an electric guitar, this includes neck bowing adjustment, string height, and intonation/adjusting the bridge saddles. I have discussed guitar maintenance before, and I highly recommend anyone even a little bit interested in playing guitar regularly to be familiar with what goes on, Watch YouTube videos as well as secure a good guitar maintenance/repair book like Guitar Setup & Maintenance by Chad Johnson (Hal Leonard Publishing ISBN 978-1-4584-1824-1).

Once fully set up, I plugged her into an amp to test her out. This kit happened to be pre-wired, so the pickups, switch, volume/tone controls and wiring was already complete – all I had to do was drop the wired pickguard into place. The pickups give off a good Strat sound, although are a bit noisy when a single pickup is switched on. I plan to take the pickguard off soon and line the body cavity with some aluminum foil tape to hopefully suppress some of the buzz. In the 2 and 4 switch positions, which combines either the neck/middle pickups or the middle/bridge pickups, the noise cancels out, and it was a nice warm sound. These two settings have always been my favorite on a Strat, giving off a glassy tone.

Speaking of which, I have never really been a fan of the volume/control configuration for most Strats. This consists of one volume and two tone controls (one for the neck/middle pickup and one for the bridge pickup). Tone controls on most electric guitars are passive, meaning no amplification is there, and the controls only act as cutting back on the tone, namely the high end. Rarely do guitarists mess with the control and usually keep it at 10, since cutting back on the treble also means cutting back on the output of the pickup. In my younger days when I really experimented with guitar wiring, I would often mess with the tone control by re-wiring it to a low-cut control or adding a switch to turn the tone control completely off. Perhaps with a later kit, but this one I just wanted to get it together and see/hear the finished product.

As an added touch, I named the project an Ambertone. I always like the color of ambertone (sort of a honey color, just slightly darker than a natural finish), and Amber is also the name of a co-worker that does a lot of woodwork who has taken some interest in this project.

I may jump into the next kit soon. I have another Strat, a Telecaster, and a Precision Bass kit waiting in the wings. I know that for the bass, I plan on doing a lot more customizing by adding a second pickup, so that one may have to wait for a while. For either the Strat or Tele, I am interested in finishing the entire body with only the Tru-Oil finish (https://luegra.design.blog/2025/05/10/tru-oil-for-guitar-finishing/). I also still want to attempt to finish one of the guitars with a special green stain dye that I ordered sometime back.

Chew on it and comment.

Longest Yard Sale/Old-Time Fiddler Covention 2024

Apologies for being a day late, but this weekend was the one that I visit both the US 12 Longest Yard Sale and the Michigan Fiddlers Association Old-Time Fiddlers Convention.

Friday was the day for the year sale. While they advertise it going from Detroit to the western border at New Buffalo, things don’t start to really show up until after Saline if you travel west on the road. Nothing for knick-knacks this year for me, but I did pick up a few music bargains.

MXL 770 large-diaphragm condenser microphone. I really have no need for one of these, as I just sold off a similar one last year and have an older MXL model that I still keep. However, it was a good price, and it was never used, with a shock mount still wrapped up in plastic. I am sure that I can re-sell it and make a few dollars.
Kustom KLA 10 guitar practice amplifier. Again, I have a few small practice amps already, but I picked it up for next to nothing. These are pretty good, reliable little amps, as Kustom has been putting them out for years. I will probably do a review on this next week.
Jasmine by Takamine S-35 acoustic guitar. I did an overview of my experiences with Jasmine guitars in a previous blog (https://luegra.design.blog/2023/09/30/jasmine-guitars-the-good-as-well-as-the-bad-and-ugly/). This particular guitar was made while Jasmine was still a part of the Takamine company. These are high-quality beginner guitars that can hold up to models costing a lot more (these go for about $100.00 used), and it came with a high-end Road Runner case/gig-bag. I paid $60.00 for the package, which is nearly what the gig bag cost new. The guitar was hardly touched. The seller told me that he purchased it for his daughter in high school and she lost interest rather quickly. When I got home, as I was cleaning out the gig bag, I found some lyrics that the girl must have written while she was still interested in playing and performing. Very cliché lyrics about breaking up with a boyfriend, but I had to smile that she at least tried to write a song. I have another S-35, and I will look at selling at least one if not both in the near future.
2002 Made in Mexico Fender Stratocaster. Despite being over 20 years old, it still had the cellophane on the pickguard and wammy bar cover. All I can figure that it sat for all of that time because the nut is cut too low on the B string, so the original owner never bothered to fix it. That’s a $20.00 job if I do it myself, probably $50.00 or so if I get a shop to do it. We shall see if I budget my time, and it’s not like I have to do it right away. I still got a decent deal on it, and while I don’t play electric guitar much, I know a deal when I see it.

There is not a lot of music equipment available along the strip of sales, mostly clothes, old toys, and possible collectible antiques. But I have been going every year since before COVID, and I will surely take the day off from work to go again next year.

Saturday I spent a few hours at the Old-Time Fiddle Convention in Hastings, Michigan. While this is not a big event, those that attend for the three days are extremely loyal fiddlers interested in old-time music and jamming with others. I probably could have more time there, but traffic accents and construction took a lot of my Saturday morning time. I caught the end of the Sing-Along workshop by Glen Warners, then watched the Michigan Fiddle Tunes workshop hosted by Dave Langdon. Dave is a great old-time fiddler, playing left handed. However, his instructional skills are less than satisfactory. While the class worked on two simple fiddle tunes, and most everyone there were competent with the tunes, Dave tends to just play a part of the tune and then have everyone join in. There is very little discussion on notes, and he doesn’t even give a count to start the song, he just jumps in and expects everyone to catch what he is doing. There were a few instances that students had to point out that he wasn’t following the sheet music verbatim, but said that he had his own style. Fortunately, everyone in attendance was very friendly and appreciative of the workshop.

I was able to make a simple video of the Langdon workshop with my older video camera (I’m still having problems with the video camera I purchased last year, and the instruction manual is all in Chinese, so I still have a lot to learn with it). I will post it on my YouTube page later this week.

I would love to see more people at the convention. Unfortunately, Hastings is not that easy to drive to, and people interested in old-time fiddle music are usually going to hit more popular events such as Galax in Virginia. The MFA doesn’t do much to advertise the event either, so attendance depends mostly through word-of-mouth from previous attendees. I have chatted this event up to many other bluegrass musicians and fiddlers, but just about everyone feigns interest. I do plan on going next year, as well as hitting the old-time fiddle contest in New Boston this October.

Chew on it and comment.