Deep Purple Strat HM Tele story

[strat80hm]

Hey there,
I m new here, this forum is terrific, love the community, the great stories and the pics!!

Here s mine:
I just bought my second Strat HM (with the Tele pick guard) that i am about to renovate. I d like to get rid of the Allen-wrench system and go for something quick-string-changing friendly, like the original Fender "tremolo" bridge or something in that fashion.

Before taking the understandable wrath from the HM community, let me tell you a quick bedtime story.

Once upon a time (last week), there was an ad on Craigslist about a Strat HM for sale: the (cellphone) picture was crappy and the vendor wouldn't be very precise neither in the post, nor in the email, and we had one short phone conversation where he explained me he was clueless about the guitar, but he needed the cash.

So i went: i drove on some dark narrow country roads for a while, this was in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere (well, actually in a little town of Northern Oregon) while i was on a North Pacific Coast tour.

Long story short, i had no time to try the guitar, i just stopped by the guy s garage door where he was waiting for me in the dark, grabbed the gigbagless guitar by the neck, handed the cash ($200), said bye and kept on driving for about an hour to the hotel in Portland.

I must say that i usually take a lil more time when buying my instruments - i never buy them new though - but for that price, i thought i couldn't go very wrong anyway.


Happy and excited, under the light of the hotel room, i could finally see what i just bought - from head to toe:


HEADSTOCK
- usual large STRAT logo
- gotoh tuners
- Kahler locking nut with missing clamps and bolts.


NECK
- 2 octave rosewood neck straight though slightly warped
- some strange "hollow sounding" zone (when you knock it) in the middle of the neck


BODY:
- sort of metallic-purplish dark blue
- black tele pick-guard


ELECTRONIC
- slanted Lace Sensor, humbucker (probably stock) with broken frame
- 1 volume knob + 1 TBX tone + 1 pickup selector
- a hole in lieu of the the mini toggle switch


BRIDGE
- Kahler Spyder
- missing vibrato arm
- string locker rounded up (thus impossible to lock/unlock)
- unmatched fine tuners (3 flat ones (Floyd rose style) + 3 bulky ones (Kahler style)
- slanted bridge-mounting bolts (they actually spin inside the holes when trying to adjust height)

I m posting a couple of pics - i know you are like me, we prefer bedtime stories with images.

s1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff469/strat80hm/Strat%20HM%20Blue/

Like most of you i guess, i love:
- the neck (best ever)
- the fender headstock
- the thinner body shape
- the sounds
- the lightweight
- the 80s


But i don't really like
- the double locking system in day to day situation (where s my toolbox? just broke a string!!)
- the dark color
- the obvious strat logo (i ve read what some thinks of it and i respect that, but i find it "noisy", LIKE WHEN PEOPLE WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTER


I d like to"
- "downgrade" the bridge: has anyone else done that yet?
The spacing between the 2 poles in inches is 2'7/8", making it way larger than the classic Fender bridge: what are my options?

- strip the painting and give it a more natural wood finish, maybe light wood stain, or maybe even a "telecaster yellow one"

Did anyone stayed awake that far in my story?
If so, any thought to share? Thank you in advance

[stratznhatz]

Sounds like you got a bargain there my friend! Quite a rare one too I think.
Looks to be in good shape, I personally like the deep purple paint but it's your guitar, your call!

[strat80hm]

Merci, yup i m excited to fix it and play it soon.

Still wondering for the color: i find the thing a bit dark for my liking overall.
I might wanna keep that Purple base and add life via a colored pickguard, though i cant seem to find any satisfying color scheme. I might try Blanc Creme.
Also i like the black pickguard since it makes the pickup and spyder more "discrete", hidden in the dark spot - thus changing the body s color.

Is there any way to make it a brighter without removing it, like exposing it to the sun for 5 years, or something?

[stratznhatz]

Nov 5, 2011 20:59:03 GMT -5 strat80hm said:

Merci, yup i m excited to fix it and play it soon.

Is there any way to make it a brighter without removing it, like exposing it to the sun for 5 years, or something?

Ha ha! yeah that would work, I've seen a few pink HM's in particular that have suffered this fate.
Kind of a long winded way of doing it though lol! ;D

[strat80hm]

I ve seen that too: the signature 80s pink actually turn into signature 60s salmon under a couple of decades under (spot)light, who knew? ;D


I guess i might have to rumble on art&paint forums for this one then.
The Lace Sensor and Humbucker and Kahler and all plastic and screws are already black, it s indeed tempting to leave them that way

[Del]

Correct me if I am wrong. Isn’t the color of the stripe under the bottom of the large “Strat” on the headstock, and the color of body suppose to bethe same? At least they do on mine. It may be from lighting, the picture or just what I as seeing but the stripe on the headstock looks pink? Just asking for future reference, I have a lot to learn about the HM.
Thanks

[heem6]

A lot of times at the factory Fender would have a big barrel of necks and just pick out one at random for the next guitar. Consequently a lot of HM necks have a different stripe color than the body.

Just my 2 cents - I love that color purple! It reminds me of Dodge and Plymouth supercars of the 70's. Also, that Kahler will stay in tune forever and a day. If you downgrade it may be easier to change strings (which you probably won't do that often), but you'll also have to tune the guitar every time you use the whammy bar and maybe every time you play the guitar (which you hopefully WILL do often)!

I would clean it up and leave it as it is! Again, my 2 cents. YMMV.

Nice score!!

[Del]

Good to know that the colors were not all matching, I assumed they were since the one I have match. I figured that if the stripes mismatched that they were pieced together. So now I will have to kick myself a good one. I passed on two guitars because of the colors being different. One was a little over a year ago, and the other about three years ago. Wish I’d found this forum earlier.

[The Guitar]

www.wammiworld.com will be your friend in getting replacement parts for the lock nut and bar. The only boner is the bar is $29, but is the best place to get kahler parts.

[handtrix]

.

[stratznhatz]

Jan 24, 2012 0:41:38 GMT -5 Del said:

Correct me if I am wrong. Isn’t the color of the stripe under the bottom of the large “Strat” on the headstock, and the color of body suppose to bethe same? At least they do on mine. It may be from lighting, the picture or just what I as seeing but the stripe on the headstock looks pink? Just asking for future reference, I have a lot to learn about the HM.
Thanks

Funny you should say that as I was thinking the same thing about my black HM. That has a pink stripe under the logo but looking round the body at all the dings (and there are a lot of dings lol!) there is no sign of any pink paint under the black so I guess that's how it left the factory.

[strat80hm]

Update: would i be able to fit a Vintage vibrato block on this guitar?
I mean: do i have to fill up the routing?

Also, i installed an Ebanol nut instead of the locking nut: it was a little too high so i had to custom made a part.
Though the main problem is that the strings pop out of the grooves: it might need string retainers

[strat80hm]

Also: the once warped neck is now straight! I just loosened the truss-rod and left the neck in a plastic bag with wet sponges for a week. That s all it took!

[strat80hm]

i m now looking for an vibrato block with a piezo system.

As said i m tired of Allen wrench, so i m aiming for a standard or vintage X-Bridge from LRBaggs: my regular 60s re-issue strat has a vintage bridge (set up floating), a plastic nut and vintage tuning pegs, and thanks to graphite (pencil), it hold tuning pretty well while use it up and down all the time. So i hope i would manage to install a similar system on this purple HM.

So far, when i remove the nut lockers, the thing doesnt stay in tune at all! This is why i tried the ebanol nut.
Unfortunately this asks for string retainers, so i m not sure what i m gonna do here. Any suggestion welcome.

[strat80hm]

Also i just got a sustainer on ebay! Black and Humbucker-sized though, so i need to carve a new pickguard (and the body, arghhhh). If anybody ever did that, feel free to share advices.

As you guys suggested, I might wanna keep that purple finish in the end: though I d like to tone-down the "dark" look of that guitar and make it look a tad more "smiling", i d need to choose the right color.
I m thinking an aged-white or pale-green, with black pickups and chrome hardware, that should do the trick.
Again, feel free to share thoughts.