[Blocked Image: http://s17.postimg.org/7v9fehf3j/image.jpg][Blocked Image: http://s17.postimg.org/ni0orusvj/Bluitar.jpg]
This guitar has interesting story, I'm finally done working on it. It's a part caster as can be seen, I'm not too thrilled with the finish, but that's not my strength I guess. It's a mahogany body, from GFS and the neck is mighty mite and the rest is Wilkinson parts. The wilkinson Alnico 5 humbucker sounded best as if they were made for that guitar after trying some Seymour duncan and dimarzion that didn't work as well!!
In my quest to get closer to a less paul sound using a strat body and neck, I've gotten the closest with this guitar.
The interesting part of the story happened as I initially was disappointed with the original paint job. The sound was great but I decided to refinish it just because I couldn't stand being reminded of what I did wrong every time I looked at it.. That was very agonizing, For whatever reasons refinishing didn't work out as planned and out of frustration I decided to bleach the wood aggressively and start with a clean slate. I have heard that wood bleach can effectively destroy the wood and make it age very rapidly. If not neutralize in time by vinegar it will continue to deteriorate. I though what the hell, as most research suggested that bleaching the wood is an awful thing to do to a guitar, I figured I really didn't care at the point and maybe by luck, aging the wood would improve the tone .
Before refinishing the neck joint was perfect and the guitar sustained quite well with a floating tremolo. After refinishing and putting the guitar together using the same floating tremolo setup, the guitar sounded and resonated stunningly better than before. Holly cow, how did that happen? I was in disbelief and decided to go all the way and block the tremolo to get even more sustain. We all know to sound like a less paul, you simply need a less paul, but this combination in the strat body, mahogany with a maple neck seems to bring me to the same ballpark with a unique ballsy flavor of its own. I weight the guitar and compared with the other les paul style guitars I have, it weight 7 lb compared to 9-10 lbs for the others, yet it was a little louder more focused and just as beefy! The les Paul flavor and vintage vibe and bite weren't there so by no means it will negate those other guitars.
If I knew for sure that bleaching the wood will give consistently the same desirable results of natural aging, I would probably do it to few other guitars because in either case they will outlive me. One thing I learned is when dealing with wood, each situation can proof to be unique; experimenting can be just fun on its own when the results are happy endings (no pun intended).