New Jon Baxter Pickups special order is almost done!

Okay, so this isn't exactly a Stressed Out Guitars subject, but since we just announced a partnership with Jon Baxter Pickups, I figured it at least makes sense... I ordered a set of Tele pickups for my newest Tele that are custom wound with a 9.5" magnet radius to match my fingerboard/string height radius! We hand picked the magnet type, wire and bobbin height [most were Jon's wonderful ideas] and now they're ready to wind! I'm really curious to see what adjusting the radius does to the overall evenness of the pickups... We'll see very soon! Here's a sneak peek! 

New project done! Aging hardware on a REAL 50's Strat body!

This one was a fun project! This customer has a mix of REAL vintage parts and modern parts, and he wanted the modern parts to match the vintage ones! Under normal circumstances this would actually be pretty easy. Just do a full-on rust job on the hardware and that's it. But this was unusual because the actual vintage parts were not super rusty or nasty. This customer went to great lengths to grab vintage parts that were in excellent condition. But when you're talking about parts from the mid-50's, they're going to at least be tarnished and scuffed. So I had to be meticulous about getting the parts to all look like they came from the same guitar. The parts that I had to age were the entire tremolo and all screws [NOT including the saddles and set screws, those were from '57], and the neck plate and neck screws. The weird thing about that is that the neck plate WAS from the 50's, but it was in such great shape that it looked nothing like the saddles, screws and jack plate. So yea, I had my work cut out for me on this one. It was a hodgepodge of parts new and old. But it was a lot of fun getting metal parts to match real parts from the 50's. I've got a few pics up on my facebook page [link below], so go check those out. This is sort of a "Part One" of a two or three part project, probably. Right now the body and most of the parts are legit 50's, but the neck is a '62 reissue. This customer is still looking for a good '57 or later 50's neck, so there might need to be some adjustments to that once it's found. He does have 50's era tuning machines already though, so that's pretty awesome! Oh, yea, the body was appraised by Gruhn's in Nashville as either a '57 or '58 that was refinished in THICK poly finish. They also appraised and confirmed that all the vintage 50's parts were indeed legit. So no fakes here. Just the real deal, folks! Anyway, check it out if you have a second. Just three simple pics to look at. Thanks! www.facebook.com/stressedoutguitars