I have this '79 ash bodied strat which I really, really love - all stock except for the pickguard, sounds amazing, great neck and all, but it is also the heaviest guitar I've ever owned - it is seriously around 13 lbs (around 6 kg) according to my personal scale.
Luckily one of my friends is a great luthier (check out The Wolf Guitars on fb: https://www.facebook.com/thewolfguitars/ ) and he offered me building a replacement strat body for a great price. Since we are aiming for the lightest body weight possible, he offered to make me a chambered body instead of traditional solid one. And there's the catch - I can't really tell what it will sound like on the strat. I really love the snapinness of this particular strat, it is really, really treble focused (almost ice picky on bridge position) but the treble can be perfectly tamed with the tone controls (icepicky sounds come handy when it comes to stacking fuzz pedals). It also has decent amount of sustain. The original 79 ash body is really funny tho, it's like they forgot to put the contouring on it. The front arm cut is almost non existent and it feels almost like a slab body guitar (it feels great tho, never had any issues with it). The body is also 2.5mm thicker than it should be according to our measures
Do you think chambering will preserve the tonal characteristics of the guitar ?
I am enclosing some pics of the strat to make this thread less dull
btw the new body will be in champaign sparkle, since I am bored to death with natural/sunburst guitars.
