Not-so-new Guitar Day: my birth-year (1986) AVRI strat

[Surfysonic]

Also, I wouldn't want to step on the toes of my '63 Jag, which is rocking a very similar theme.



Thanks for trudging through my many ramblings! I'm glad you eventually found the right one. I agree that 7-way switching is the bees knees. That and wiring the second tone control to the bridge pickup should be standard procedure for every strat IMO, though for my purposes I'd probably like a single pickup Musicmaster strat nearly as much. It's just such a satisfying tone. So who knows, whether I go with Tele style 3-way or 7-way, I definitely want neck and bridge as an option. It's positions 2-4 that I don't really need. I don't use the quack for anything at all and the only middle pickup tone I really like is Doug Martsch's gold lace sensor, which I have covered by my Marauder.

It's weird, I'm usually all for overcomplicated wiring schemes, but part of me is wanting to keep this one simple. Maybe the cheap part, given how pricey Kinmans are. But the Quiet Coils are only available as sets right now, so I'd probably wire those with a 7-way if I got them.

The blue sparkle Jag is looking awesome as ever (I think you meant '62...ask me how I know... )

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good guitar yarn.

Go with what works for you! Simplicity is always a great option! In my case, especially after I slog through wiring up something complicated.

[sal paradise]

That strat is beautiful.

[BoringPostcards]

Yea, that’s a lovely Strat, Mike. Enjoy!

[Pacafeliz]

Oh yes lovely

[Embenny]

The blue sparkle Jag is looking awesome as ever (I think you meant '62...ask me how I know... )

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good guitar yarn.

Go with what works for you! Simplicity is always a great option! In my case, especially after I slog through wiring up something complicated.

Hah, you totally caught the typo. Sometimes I post from my phone and for some reason, I've never been able to adjust to the keyboard on my "new" phone that I got like a year and a half ago. It's gotten better but I still make tons of typos compared to my old phones.

That Jaguar is still my #1. It would be the last guitar I ever sold. I just love it. It's everything I could ever ask a Jaguar to be.

That strat is beautiful.

Yea, that’s a lovely Strat, Mike. Enjoy!

Oh yes lovely

Thanks, everyone.

Today while playing, I realized that none of the photos I posted really show the wear on the neck. From a playing perspective, you see it much more, but most importantly, you can feel it.

Here are a couple of crappy phone pics, but you get the idea.

[Sauerkraut]

That’s a beautiful Strat!

This is probably not very helpful, but I agree that with Strats, I only really like the neck pickup. That was until I swapped out the bridge pickup for a Tele-for-Strat bridge pickup (taller construction, baseplate), which really does sound like a Tele bridge pickup. Tele bridge pickups are just better sounding, more fun pickups to me, so it seems like a sensible upgrade for Strats. I also swapped the middle one for a Jag pickup, which of course makes for a silly looking guitar, but I also found it sounds better. A jag pickup at that distance from the bridge is really interesting.

[JSett]

The thing is, it's not actually Lake Placid Blue. If you look at the buckle wear on the back of the guitar, you can see that it's actually a silver undercoat with a blue top coat, which would make this a candy finish like CAR. CAB maybe? Lake Placid Candy Blue? In any case, LPB has the metallic flakes integrated with the colour coat, and the difference is definitely noticeable in person. This guitar has a deeper quality to the finish, while my LPB Jaguar looks flatter but dances more under the light. This is the type of thing that would spawn a 50-page thread if they did it on an AVII, but in 1986 the Corona plant had just opened and I guess they were still figuring out how to replicate the details of the original guitars. It's more of a cool historical footnote to me than anything else - I don't think too many people have dissected how these early reissues were finished.

I thought I'd come back to comment on this part of your post.

The top coat looks to be a solid/opaque colour from the pictures. Is that the case?

[superficial]

The top coat looks to be a solid/opaque colour from the pictures. Is that the case?

Is the grey (silver?) just a primer? It doesn't look sparkly enough to be a proper silver for a candy-style finish? Or am I seeing some brown/red primer under that?

[Embenny]

I thought I'd come back to comment on this part of your post.

The top coat looks to be a solid/opaque colour from the pictures. Is that the case?

Is the grey (silver?) just a primer? It doesn't look sparkly enough to be a proper silver for a candy-style finish? Or am I seeing some brown/red primer under that?

Yeah, these are the details that are a bit tough to discern. The finish has so much patina and checking that it's tough to find a clear spot to examine for these details, even in person.

The metallic base coat doesn't appear to have anything underneath it. There's a little hint of reddishness to some of the thinnest areas of it on the back, but that looks more like some type of oxidation or something. You cam see the layers pretty clearly in person and it seems to be just silver and then blue.

The blue isn't a deep transparent colour or anything, and I'm not sure if it's from clouding/patina or what, but it doesn't look like a flat solid colour pigment, and it doesn't look like a metallic LPB colour coat, either. It looks to me like a very saturated semi-transparent pigment, but I don't think I could tell for certain unless I chipped a single-layered piece off.

Because the silver layer is finer-grained than a CAR undercoat, it also shows through less, but in person the finish does appear to have some of that candy finish depth to it.

So my best guess is that, in that first year of production, they tried approximating LPB with a combo of a relatively flat silver base coat and a semi-transparent colour coat. Seems like a reasonable attempt if those paints were available and a proper LPB wasn't.

[Ozone7]

Lovely Strat, sir.

I've got a Kinman Blues set on the way for my '86 Japanese '62 Strat.

I'm actually going to sell it but it needs new pickups to replace the ones that have gone back in my '83 JV '57 strat which is also on its way out the door, and more valuable in original condition.

It sounds a bit fundamentalist (or maybe just mentalist) to put Kinman in there if it's going, but I'm interested in hearing what they sound like in a Stratocaster as my keeper Strat is loaded with EMG's.

Seeing that now I have Kinmans in my Jaguar, Jazzmaster, SG and Flying V.
Oh, and yes that's a broad church even for a non-13 year old.

But in my defence, the Flying V is lilac.

Hope you get what works for you.

[HNB]

That was a super good pawn shop find. I agree that it is a really nice guitar. That shop obviously had no idea what it was. Glad I jumped on it and glad it is in a happy home.