If you follow the workshop blog you potentially may recall a series I shared back in 2023 featuring a hardtail Strat build I had started. Aside from being a fun personal project, the idea behind that article was that I wanted to share the process of making a Strat body with relatively basic tools to help those considering taking on a project like it of their own. So for this I didn't use CNC, it was done with basic templates, hand operated routers, rasps, files and so on.
Needless to say, the project didn't just stop at the body, I did finish it. But as is often the case, work and life got in the way of me sharing the final product here on the blog. So, three years later, here I am haha! I am however pleased to say that this guitar became my favourite, I play it pretty much every day and despite just starting life as a fun blog project, it became much more than that to me.
It has since gone through a couple of cosmetic changes, so I want to share it here in it's first guise, as well as it's current form.
So I made the body in 2023, and got the guitar completed somepoint in 2024. Here is how it looked back then! 
To summarise the project; I grew up with Strats, I was obsessed with them for many years so they certainly always feel like 'home' whenever I have one in my hands. But I hadn't actually owned one for a good few years now. I think that longer period of time away from owning one has lead me to look at the visual and spec details that I really liked about them, and the same for what I didn't too. This project gave me the chance to make some tiny revisions that all make it a little bit more 'me' in light of time spent playing other styles of guitar.
Over those recent years, my main electric guitar was a traditional floating vibrato equipped Jazzmaster, fulfilling 25.5" scale duties too. The Jazzmaster's incredibly intuitive floating vibrato systems made me realise just how little I actually like the classic Strat bridge/vibrato. Not to say they're bad, heck, how can you utter such things when Jeff Beck did what he did via a Strat 2 point vibrato. It's just not for me, and the Jazzmaster floating vibrato felt like the perfect system for how I like to use them. Bigsby esq but more delicate, controlled and reliable too I guess. So with this in mind, if I were to build a Strat, I'd definitely just leave vibrato duties to the Jazzmaster, and adopt a hardtail bridge instead.
So for hardtail duties, I reached for the Descendant B.C.B bridge from stock, which is effectively a Tele half bridge that can accomodate top loading or string through, and comes as standard with 3 brass compensated saddles. I had every intention of sticking with those saddles, but my good friend Elliott at Trent Guitars kindly sent me a set of his, in house designed saddles, again a 3 saddle compensated design, slightly more pronounced compensation by comparison I'd say, and in a satin silver finish. 
As noted in the prior body build article, I also used a Grainger Guitar Parts ferrule block, instead of individual string ferrules. I personally love how these chunky brass blocks look, but also can't help but be reassured that the string anchor point is as good as can be. The ferrule block sits nice and tightly into the rear routed cavity, with all 6 strings feeding through the single thick brass block.
For the paintwork, full credit here to Elliott at Trent Guitars. I had every intention of painting the guitar myself, but for a number of reasons over the course of the year following making the body, the time never came. So I reached out to Elliott who kindly took on the job for me, and what a stunning job he did. He's of course a guitar maker, busy with his own designs and builds, but it was kind of him to take on this job for me. I chose his own colour which he often uses on his Trent Guitar builds, Oyster White. Partly as I love the colour, and also I figured it might make life his easier when he already has that colour in his spray gun! I wanted it to be water based, satin finish, open grained and a nice soft/vintage white. So this fit the bill perfectly and very grateful to Elliott for his lovely work on this for me. Do check out his guitars by the way!
For the neck, I had the chance to grab a Japanese made Hosco neck for a great price via one of my suppliers. Having used one to the same specs for a customer build in the past, I knew the quality, neck profile etc would all suit me just fine so it seemed like a great, and affordable option to get this build off the ground and finished up.
Overall a lovely neck, but with some refinement it'll be even better. So all of the usual neck prep work I like doing to get the best from a partscaster, was done. Rolling the edges, a full fret level/crown/dress/polish, some sanding and a bone nut.
The only detail I didn't like, and wanted to change was the heel trussrod adjuster. As lovely as it is having that nice clean headstock, needing to take a neck off for each truss rod adjustment is ultimately, old fashioned. I opted for a cost effective, simple solution to this which was retrofitting a heel truss rod wheel adaptor instead.
I accomodated for it with how I routed the body, and how I made the pickguard. I know that visually these aren't to everyone's tastes, but for me, the functionality and ease of adjustability overrides that.
Another little detail I did, was a headstock faceplate. Seeing as it had a traditional Strat headstock, I was trying to think about how to give it a slightly more unique look and had the idea of matching the pickguard to a faceplate. So using the same acrylic material I was going to make the custom pickguard out of, I also made a matching faceplate. This turned out great, I think, and gave it some personality.
Speaking of the pickguard, here's the first version I made for it! A beautiful, tort-esq swirl acrylic material, which I cut and backpainted to try and help the lighter colours stand out more. I then routed it for a McNelly Silvercaster neck single coil pickup, a McNelly Wild Range bridge humbucker a 3 way blade switch, master 500k volume pot, and a TBX tone pot. A simple, back to basics control setup, but captures the tones I was after from this guitar. You may notice the neck pickups cover not having visible pole pieces, this was intentional. I was really inspired at the time with how single bridge pickup guitars looked. Les Paul and SG Juniors, Super Strats etc, and I wanted to capture that look but still have the versatility of a neck pickup. So thought a more 'stealth' like neck pickup cover would help achieve that look.
With the neck prep work finished, headstock painted (not shown in the photos I'm afraid), which I used a can of Molotow Coversall water-based ultra-matt acrylic paint, in a soft white to try and match Elliott's paintwork on the body. And I then used a water based clear coat over the headstock and back of the neck to finish it off. I got started on mounting everything up, and shielding the cavities ready for the final assembly.
I happily lived with the guitar like this for a couple of years, and the guitar quickly became my favourite. Loved how it sounded, loved how it played and I quickly felt completely at home with it. But have to admit, I wasn't totally in love with the tort, it was nice but I wasn't totally happy so my brain was wandering coming up with other fun ideas.
I landed on an idea using the same 3mm acrylic material, but clear. After backpainting the tort original, it inspired the idea of doing the same as I love the sense of depth it provides. This time though, due to it being a clear material, I opted to try a paint splatter style using some lovely pastel green and blue colours to see how that came out.
With this method working out nicely, I realised I could further the 'stealth' neck pickup cover aesthetic by painting the cover too!
With this new pickguard, I also found a cool pair of Knob Head Custom control knobs with a complimentary pastel blue colour with paint splatters, so those found a new home on the guitar. After trialling the Trent Guitars saddles on the guitar previously, I thought I'd see how they compared to some Gotoh In-Tune saddles too, just for my own curiosity really seeing as I hadn't done an A/B comparison between those two. I'll live it these for a while to see how they compare, but must say visually I do like the colour 'pop' of the brass saddles against the white guitar, and helps tie in the brass neck plate and string ferrule block on the back too.
I really like this visual change to the guitar, it's a little different, has a little more personality than the white/tort prior combo in my opinion. Both look nice though but happy with where the guitar is currently, so just getting stuck into playing the thing really! It's my favourite guitar I own, without a doubt. From what started as a fun blog post idea, to becoming my fave guitar, so a pleasant end to the tale really! At some point I will record some demos of it, so maybe that'll be the third part to this blog series.
Thanks for sticking around, sorry it took me 3+ years to follow up from the original article on the project though!
Cheers!
James