Squier Stratocaster:
Resurrection of "The Mad Scientist Guitar"
• Serial number: E1029848.• Made in Korea around 1987.
• Acquired 1988 from Pro Center, Helsinki.
• Construction: Originally laminated mahogany body with thin veneer on top and back, later "chambered" with several 32 mm holes under the pickguard. Replaced with a 3 piece alder body (by Dr.Parts). Maple neck with rosewood fingerboard.
• Colour: original metallic blue paint stripped soon after acquiring the guitar, stained and oiled, several years later repainted copper. New body has only a natural satin lacquer finnish. Original 3-ply white plastic pickguard replaced with an aluminium pickguard, later replaced with a new 3-ply plastic pickguard.
• Original strap buttons replaced with Schaller straplocks.
• Pickups: a PJ Marx Side-by-side humbucker (bridge). Two Fender-Lace Sensors (gold; middle and neck). Used to have aShadow 1550 MU hex pickup for midi but I took it off to be used with other guitars.
• Original pickup switch replaced with three mini-toggle switches in a "Dan Erlewine Super Strat" configuration, added fourth mini-toggle as bridge pickup serial/parallel coil switch.
• Bridge: Original bridge replaced with a Hipshot Trilogy, finally re-replaced with the original.
Before the Resurrection
Hipshot Trilogy bridge system has three pre-determined tuning settings for each strings, in principle allowing more than 700 different tunings for the guitar by just flicking of the levers. In practice, no guitar made of wood is rigid enough to allow the more drastic tuning changes to be exact. My settings for the Trilogy levers was a variation of the Hipshot recommended system to allow the tunings I used the most (DADGAD, Open D) have easily memorable lever positions:
6 5 4 3 2 1
high E B E G# B E
mid D A D G A D
low C G C F# G C#
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