Tales of the Frankencaster - Part 1 - The Body Finds Me

A lot of water has gone under the bridge, and some has gone over it, but there are some things that we remember as being epic, as striking a note with us. One of those things is building or modifying our own electric guitar.  Electric guitars are the thing of legend.  In our time, the hero’s sword has been replaced by the axe. King Arthur’s Excalibur has been replaced by Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstrat. We remember a time where we dreamt of making a cheap guitar priceless, or, at least, making it kind of cool. Some of us have forgotten that dream, and others have just started having it.

A friend brought me the corpse. It was a Stratocaster style body covered in duct tape. The original origin of the body and the manufacturer is unknown, and its story is a bit sketchy.  Apparently, the body fell into the hands of a self-proclaimed tree surgeon who gave it to my guitarist friend, who gave it to his nephew who promptly covered it in duct tape, because he thought it would look cool. Like a million other guitar projects, the “would be” Strat body got stuck in a corner, or a closet or a box.  People moved around and the relic somehow avoided the trash can.  It ended up back in the hands of my friend, more than likely, because it was prominently sitting on that last mile to the trash can.

More time passes and my friend is cleaning out storage and sees the silver duct tape gleaming in a dark corner. For a guitarist to throw out even part of a broken guitar would be an impossibility I think. My friend looked at a pile and picked up the body and said, “Do you want this?” Well, who could refuse that offer?

My friend thought it might make a cool wall hanging, and I put it in various places where I could look at it.  One day I came home and a guitar neck was inside my screen door. My friend left it thinking it belonged to the body. It turned out it did not.

Every time I looked at that guitar body, I remembered a guitar project I had worked on when I was a teenager that did not go so well. I was thinking it would be kind of cool to find a cheap beat up guitar and rebuild it.  Maybe even do some crazy paint job to it, or modify it in some unconventional way for the fun it. Now the duct taped masked frankencaster stared back at me every time I looked at it.

I decided to rebuilt the creature, bring it back to life. Furthermore, I decided to video the process. I hope you enjoy the videos of the construction of my Frankencaster that I will be posting over the coming weeks. They are not intended to be an expert seminar in any particular aspect of guitar building or repair, but they are intended to be an overview of the process and more like what you might see hanging out with a friend doing a similar project.