Chris Buck 1962 Fender Strat Restoration
Restoring this 1962 for Chris Buck was a fantastic project to be involved with.
I attended the auction with Chris when he bought it after I made a solemn promise I could get it all working again.
No pressure then...
Before…
With three switches cut into the pickguard and an added switch in place of the tone control, I knew things could get ugly.
There was even a control pot shaft protruding through into the spring cavity.
It was also apparent that this guitar hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time.
The patina on the peghead looks cool in the photo but in reality, it was a smelly and sticky mess that Chris wanted cleaned off.
Lifting the pickguard revealed the extensive scope of the ‘upgrades’ the previous owner had made.
Added switches of this type are common on vintage Stratocasters and it was particularly frustrating because the nitrate pickguard was otherwise in excellent condition.
It’s likely that one of the original pickups broke and it was replaced with this late 1970s grey bottom unit - maybe at the same time that 1970s pot metal saddles replaced the originals.
Fortunately, two of the pre-CBS pickups were still there, albeit with some worrying wiring modifications that Matt Bascetta at House Of Tone was able to reverse while preserving the original coils.
My guess is that the original switch had been repurposed as a preset tone switch, with the added toggle switch activating the circuit and the slider switches allocated to individual pickups.
The removed parts included the original pickup switch, which was cleaned up and carefully preserved because Chris needs a 5-way switch.
The nut came out in one piece and I discovered it was rasied up on paper shims that I removed with a craft knife.
The third fret was the worst shape, with a massive chip in the rosewood and a slot that was too badly damaged to hold a fret.
To salvage the slot I infilled rosewood strips using fish glue.
After sanding flush, I used the undamaged centre section of the slot to guide my fret saw, and then repeated the process on the other side.
The fretboard had been varnished and I carefully sanded it off using a radius block.
Sanding the board highlighted the deep divots and the worst of them, across the first few frets, were later filled with superglue mixed with rosewood.
Board sanding was kept to an absolute minimum because the some intention was to create a level surface for the fretwire rather than to try and eliminate the wear spots.
The July 1962 date stamp reveal that Chris’ guitar was made during the first month that Fender transitioned to veneer fretboards.
Both the vintage potentiometers were stripped down, cleaned up and reassembled.
Chris uses his volume control continuously, but rarely touches the tone controls. So it was decided to put the original pots into semi-retirement and install a new volume pot that can be replaced if and when it wears out.
We didn’t hold out much hope for the original tuners, but after soaking and flushing with naphtha, they worked fine and held tuning perfectly.
I wasn’t entirely happy with the pickguard patches, but I was very pleased with the way the fretboard and frets turned out.
The headstock was cleaned up, taking great care to preserve the decal, and a decision was made to install a new bone nut.
I aged up this set of reproduction saddles to replace the 1970s ones, and relic’d up a tone knob to replace the missing one.
The finished guitar!
Videos
Chris’s 1962 Strat restoration as part of ToneTwinsTV series.