Chris Buck Clapton Strat
When Chris Buck acquired this Clapton Strat it had a non-original body with very rough routs for the electronics.
When he eventually found an original body, I was asked to put it all together.
The innards of the Clapton Strat pre-restoration.
The potentiometers include a 50k volume control, a dual-gang tone control and a separate volume for the boost circuit.
Clapton Strats feature this preamp circuit board with four transistors. The original Lace Sensors look a little corroded and there’s no guarantee the electronics are working.
It turns out that two of the original Lace Sensors are broken so this new set has to be fitted.
The new pickups are mounted, with the orange wires connected to the switch and the green and white ground wires connected to the volume pot.
The ground, signal and battery negative wires are temporarily soldered to a new output socket to test the circuit.
The circuit board is secured with two corner screws and the body ground connection is located just above the coloured wires.
The battery wedges into this recess adjacent to the vibrato springs and the plastic cover holds it in place.
Fret-bevelling tools with diamond files are used to smooth off the protruding frets and tidy up the bevel before the fret ends are polished with fine abrasive paper and micromesh.
The finished guitar!
Video
Chris’s Strat restoration as part of Guitar Magazine’s DIY Workshop series.