'74 Strat Refresh

Of the 2000-ish Strats made in 1974 only a handful would have been a hard-tail, which makes this one quite rare. I liked this one a lot, well after several hours of work I did (as seen above), however it arrived in rough shape and was near unplayable.

This is where it started out the de-crusting journey:

The frets were in decent shape with slight wear, mainly just tranish. The board was dry with some gunk build-up and the action was sky high at around 5mm.

After plenty of scraping, oiling, fret leveling, crowning and polishing we have a playing surface we can work with:

It had a nut replacement at some point, which needed to go, I think the picture of it speaks for itself:

After a battle against the glue I made a bone nut and popped it in:

Time for a peek under the guard:

All original, and a long lost plectrum. I didn't need to do much here apart from a squirt of Servisol.

The jack was beyond saving though, went with a PureTone replacement which I use most of the time. Vintage correctness wasn't a priority here, performance was:

The bridge need a proper clean, and I decided on replacing the saddles with new stamped bent-steel versions.

Before doing the final setup I needed to get the body and neck cleaner without disturbing the worn finish, this takes time as I didn't want to add any "relicing" - it had enough of it's own already. Less dirt and a little polish makes a big difference, it's particularly noticeable around the upper left horn in the pictures below:

Throw on a set of 10s and a 1.8mm action and we're all done. CBS era Fenders don't get much love but this one is fantastic, lightweight and sounds great.