Display MoreIt occurs to me I've never shared pix. Here are the three horsemen. (The fourth is on holiday. It's a union thing.)
First, the accused...
2001 McCarty. Original specs, afraid to screw with something that works as well as it does. Pretty sure there's no blood on it.
Next, the 1983 G&L Skyhawk. I ordered it new from the factory after playing one in a store in 83. That could have been a very stupid thing to do since every guitar has its own soul, but it was absolutely perfect when it arrived. All nicks, cuts and bruises are of my own doing.
Originally it had the Kahler tremelo on it, with a metal bar just above the nut to clamp down the strings. That was an incredibly bad design and made changing a string on a gig an absolute nightmare. You had to get a wrench, remove the bar, and then tune the string a half step or two off so that when the tension was applied it would be in the neighborhood of tunability by the knobs on the bridge. I eventually removed it for a Kahler stop tail piece and put a couple of standard Fender style trees on the headstock. I also put Shaller tuners on it.
The middle pickup is the original single coil pup it came with. Replaced neck and bridge with two different Seymour Duncan (no relation, sadly) side by side (rather than stacked) humbucker pups, a bluesier one for the neck and a hotter one for the bridge. They sound awesome. Above the volume knob you can see a micro toggle switch I put in to let me split the coils. It splits both at once.
Because I'm always the lead singer / front man, I don't have the luxury of screwing around with guitar changes between songs since I'm the guy who's supposed to keep the crowd distracted in the first place. So, this was a Swiss Army Knife approach. Humbuckers for the Eddie type stuff, but still capable of handling Fender Strat-y territory.
It sounds great for rock but like all Frankenstrats, you can still tell that there's a Strat underneath. There's that typical Fender bite and not as much roundness to the tone. However, the G&L was the go to guitar because it has a much heavier body than the Strat. I think it's ash, if I recall. That helped a bit in that area. Plus, you know, if bikers rushed the stage...
Finally, my 89 American Strat. Originally bought in the mid 90s (back when it wasn't so much vintage as just a used guitar) as a backup in case I broke a string on the G&L. It was modified with the exact same pups / splitter, so the only tonal difference was the lighter body, whatever Strats were made out of back then. The pickguard was originally white but that doesn't work for me, so I replaced the pickguard and knobs with black. Also put Shaller tuners on it. It was then a hot swap spare for the G&L.
Even with the coil splitters, it's really not the same as a stock Fender single coil pup. About a year ago, with gigs long a thing of the past, I was pining for a plain old stock Strat. Even considered buying something before I realized that I already had one.
So, I ordered a new pickguard and knobs, lifted the modded one, pups and all, and dropped in the new one, adding back the stock pups it came with and just replacing the caps with black. It is now an absolutely garden variety, nothing special 1989 Fender Strat (Shaller tuners notwithstanding), and I'm delighted to have it in the lineup. Per my philosophy, it gives me something the Frankenstrat doesn't.
I didn't clean them up and polish them for this little dog and pony show, just snapped some pix. I actually do try to take care of them, do the occasional maintenance, etc. but mostly I just play them. And not nearly as often as I should.
Trifecta of rock right there mate!
