A Kisaeke approximation of the guitar as I bought it from a pawn shop in 2001. Back then, we did not have cell phones with cameras capable of photos better than a Game Boy Pocket Camera, and for me to take pictures with a Kodak disposable would have meant $40 I did not have to get the damn photos developed. That said, that guitar looked way more beaten, worn, horrendous, and mismatched in person than it does in this online approximation. Now, on with the show...

So it was the summer of 2001 and me and my ol' bandmate from Lithium decided to run around some Montgomery Pawn shops. He had his eyes on the Crate Blue VooDoo Stack but me....I had my eyes on something more affordable to my drought like wallet - a $40 electric guitar with an original Floyd Rose, Maple Neck, STrat Body, and a pearloid pickguard. It did not work right, and it had an EMG SA pickup in the bridge barely useful for anything except looking 1/3rd of the way toward Kirk Hammett's Jagermeister strat. I bought it that day and took it to rehearsal.

When I disassembled the beast, it turns out it was made out of some of the finest parts one could muster about that time: A DiMarzio swimming pool route Fender licenced body, a Warmoth fender licensed 22 fret maple neck with maple fretboard, with a profile similiar to the Peavey Wolfgang EVH guitars I'd played at the time, 2 Fender Custom Shop Single coil pickups (single coils), Chandler pickguard, Switchcraft and DiMarzio pots, jack, and 5-way switch, and an original German FLoyd Rose with R2 Locking Nut!

Back around 2004, I hit up an Opelika Pawn shop and got my hands on a red Arbor strat copy for about $25 as well. I bought this guitar because, strat-trem aside, it literally looked like Paul Dean's old funky Strat guitar, and I was in the market for a good platform to make a good strat at the time. My Squier Affinity had been stolen at that point, So I just had to have it, and the price was right. THen at some point, I got the bug to take the neck and pickguard from that strat and put it on the DiMarzio body that was actual "Tone wood" and not Plywood - I kinda' regret that, I quite well liked that Arbor guitar.

So I put the Arbor's samick built wiring, neck, and bridge on the DiMArzio body - except a couple problems IMMEDIATLEY became apparent. First off, the neck was built "off-center" - so it would only work with the Arbor strat body it came with. Also, the pickguard was a bit out of spec for a STrat, so it required some routing/chiseling where the 5-way switch went for the pickguard to fit. I can't remember if I repainted the Strat or not, it may have been I left the body as/is in it's black color over the white finish. That was a very blurry period - 2003-2005 - I was constantly switching parts and guitar bits out and changing this and that around.

So later on, I bought a second Squier affinity strat with a rosewood CBS-style neck from 2004 for about $15 - and put the neck on the DiMarzio body, and put in a ProTone tremolo unit from Guitar Center in it, and it sounded great and stayed in tune perfectly. And that's how it stayed for quite a few years, getting used on recordings and YouTube quite a bit at the time. A lot of the time, if I had a very "traditional" strat sound, it was this guitar.

So then there it sat, hanging on my wall, in the closet, moving around. ARound that time, I bought a neck from China and I could not, for the life of me, get any courier to return the extra neck they sent - to China. So I put it on that body, and that's how it was, like at left - for a really long time. Eventually I stripped it down completley. Meanwhile, the Squier neck went to my JAzzmaster, and then back to the Squier Strat it was originally on (which got a blue pearloid pickguard like the one that was stolen from me), and then that guitar got sold. So I put the second neck on this, and then the old white pickguard from the Squier, re-cut for an HSH config, with my JAgmaster's 2 pickups and the Kay KE-17's riginal bridge pickup in it. How in the hell I remember all this - I do not know, ASD I guess?

See I like 1970's style Strats a lot - black pickguards, natural finishes, brass hardware. But I also like the colors blue and green a lot - oh, you couldn't tell, lol! Gold hardware was an idea, but it was a mix of things that lead me down the direction of the 3rd from the left guitar in the picture.

The first piece was the woodgrain finish. I went to Wal-Mart - and if you followed my Jazzmaster Build, then you probably know where I might be going with this one already. When I built that Jazzmaster in 2008, I bought Minwax WoodSheen in a bottle, and created a new kind of "Crusty Socks" by wiping down the finish using old socks with holes in em' (that's why I kept old ratty clothes around - made great stuff for wipe-on polyurethane application). Anyway, all lewd jokes aside, I found I did not need the old socks anymore, because now, I could literally buy Minwax WoodSheen in a form of "Wet Wipes" - complate with a pair of gloves! Schweet! $15 later and I had a "Palamino Brown" stratocaster body that needed all the trimmings and fixings to make it a complete guitar.

The next part is e-bay. Around the mid 2010's, E-bay was a veritable wonderland of Chinese guitar parts that were fairly decent for really stupid cheap prices. One thing I found was a $25 package that came with a prewired, preloaded pickguard with Alnico2 single coil pickups, a six screw black plated vibrato unit, black plated tuners, a backplate, and all the screws I could ever need. OF course, I tossed the strap buttons - I put in my usual Schaller STrap Locks.

The result was a pretty, brown guitar with a unique look. However, one early misstep was putting black plated DR strings on it. Seriously, that was one problem with guitar in the mid 2000's was that it seems everyone was more focused on appearance than quality or musicality. They were dead as crap right out of the box. But they sure looked good, so I kept em' on there awhile. Eventually I put my obligatory Slinky's on there.

Then sometime later, I switched the bridge pickup out for a 8.5K Hot Rail pickup from a little shop called "The Trading Musician" in Seattle - highly reccommended. I also bought the second DiMarzio Super II there that I put in my Hondo Paul Dean guitar. So I put that pickup in it and it made it kinda' close to the original Samick setup. I may eventually put samick pickups back in it eventually (that 11.5K Ohm single coil was a BEAST!). That said, I did wire it up like my MEmphis 302HB guitar - except with Tri-MOde for the bridge hot rail - so it's got a couple more sounds in it than the Memphis does.