Booze and Blues: The Parts-o-caster: Part VI

Here we go folks. The moment you (or, at least, I) have all been waiting for; the majority of the work is done, so now it's time to screw in the last few bits and plug this baby in to see if it's as soulful as it is in my head, unless of course, what's in my head is all that matters. Which may be the case.

Here, I'm installing those cool knobs that started this whole thing off. Standard volume/tone knobs just kind of get pushed on, using friction to stay secure. Not that they need much more than that, since there's not a lot of force being applied to those knobs. At least, not along an axis that would cause the knob to pop off. But these knobs have a tiny screw in them that just needs to be tightened.

I turned the pots to the fully "closed" position, or the position that they'd be at 0, if these were standard knobs, and lined the knob up so that it was pointing straight towards the pickups. Pictures make a whole lot more sense. Then, I tightened the screw, and there you have it.

The switch tip gets pushed on, and that one is pretty self explanatory.

Then I screwed on the strap buttons. Strap locks are supposed to be cool. These aren't Strap locks. I've never used them, but I may someday because my guitars always seem to fall off of their straps right when I'm not paying any attention. None of my guitars have made it all the way to the floor yet, knock on wood...

Then, I screwed in the string tree. My neck came with two, but some reading confirmed that the second one does basically nothing good, so I went without it, just putting on the one over the B and high E strings.

And speaking of strings, the next step is to string 'er up. Ernie Ball 9's, simply because I don't know any better.

Lastly, I screw in the tremolo arm, and booyah. I've never owned a guitar with a working tremolo system (though it's well-documented that what the tremolo system on a Stratocaster is doing is not, in fact, tremolo, but Vibrato), so I'm excited to add this whole new dimension to my playing. Or, I could just block it if I don't ever end up using it.

And yes, she sounds gorgeous. Not my playing, mind you. That's still pretty atrocious. But have you ever played a guitar that you couldn't fail to make good tone on? Merely possessing this guitar has given me the drive to do scales everyday in an effort to get better, and this is from a guitarist who learned chords three years ago and almost nothing since. Which is equally atrocious.

And so, work done, here are the obligatory glamor shots!