To Invest or Diversify?

// April 15th, 2009 // Guitar

I’ve been toying with the idea of upgrading a number of things on my ‘96 Squier for the last couple of months now and I’ve come up with an elaborate plan/schedule to turn that Squier into a high-end customer strat. Before I get in to the heart of my predicament, allow me to lay out the facts as they exist today.

I don’t think I will ever drop $900+ on a single guitar in one fell swoop.
I can probably afford to spend $1,000 over a five year period.
I have very limited space to work with.

Invest

My upgrade plan is a simple; upgrade the guitar in three stages designed to get me the most bang for my buck.

From the Neck Up

A guitar is only as good as it’s neck and right now the neck on my Squier is without a doubt the weakest link in the chain. It took me a while to get here, but I’ve finally reached the point where my ears really notice the inherent intonation problems with my current neck. To make matters worse, when I brought it in to have the new nut installed, the tech performed a fret level and took an awful lot off the top.

Part one of my upgrade plan is to replace the neck with an aftermarket maple/rosewood neck. My choices are to purchase a used, authentic Fender neck off of eBay or a replacement neck from Warmoth. The authentic Fender neck would run me around $400 while the Warmoth neck would run me around $270. With the Warmoth I could get some rather advanced features like:

Heel Adjust Truss Rod Adjustment
Corian 1 11/16″ Nut
Stainless Dunlop 6105 Frets
10-16″ Compound Fretboard Radius

Now replacing the neck makes for the perfect time to replace my broken down Kluson tuners with some nice Schaller locking tuners. This adds another $60 bringing the grand total of phase 1 to about $330.

From a Squeak to a Roar

Here’s a news flash for you; Squier pickups are woefully underpowered. I can deal with the current neck and middle pickup, but the bridge pickup is absolutely awful. In addition to the pickup issues, both the switch and jack are starting go on me. The upgrade options for this particular phase of the plan are virtually limitless, but I’ve narrowed it down to three options:

Callaham / Fralin Pickguard Assembly – $360
Seymour Duncan Everything Axe – $250
American Standard Loaded Pickguard – $160

Of course, I really want the Callaham/Fralin pups, but I know I’d be pretty happy with any of the three. For the sake of this exercise, lets just assume that I’ve thrown caution to the wind and went with the Fralins. To complete this upgrade, I’ll need a new jack and jack plate, but I highly doubt the extra $10 is going to matter much after dropping $360 on pickups. Grand total of phase 2 is $370.

Body Double

Ah, the final phase of my upgrade plan and the one that will eventually lead to the replacement of the final remnants of my Squier. That being said, it may be completely unnecessary from a tone/performance perspective. If I do decide to replace the body it will most likely be for cosmetic reasons. The replacement body would most likely be of Swamp Ash or Alder and would have a standard triple single coil top rout. A nice transparent finish on a laminate top body from Warmoth is normally going to run about $400, but I’m going to assume that I can get something half-way decent on sale for around $350. Like replacing the tuners at the same time as the neck made sense, so does replacing the bridge at the same time as the body. For the bridge assembly, I’ll be going with the Callaham Vintage S Model Bridge Assembly to the tune of $130. Add some Schaller Strap-Lok buttons for another $15. Grand total of phase 3 is now a whopping $495.

Diversify

I have no doubt that at the conclusion of the upgrade plan above I would have one seriously top-notch strat, but is that in my best interests. At the present moment, I have two guitars; one Squier Stratocaster and a Yamaha classical. Would I be better served by diversifying my guitar collection and getting a couple of mid-range instruments to provide a wide range of styles and sounds.

Good Acoustics

My biggest gap in my own personal tone library is the old standard, steel string acoustic. With the price tag of phase 1, I could easily pick up a decent acoustic like the Ibanez Artwood AW35RECENT for $399.99.

Something Rings Hollow

I’ve always been a huge fan of that quintessential hollowbody tone for both jazz and blues music styles. Having played around with an Ibanez Artcore AF75, there is no doubt in my mind that it’s the perfect hollowbody for me and the price tag of $399.99 puts it pretty close to the cost of phase 2.

Remaining Balance

Now I overspent phase 1 by $70 and phase 2 by $20. That means I’ve got $405 dollars to spend on phase 3 of my diversification plan. A quick perusal of GuitarCenter.com and I see that there are quite a few decent guitars for $400 or less. The leaders, in my mind, are:

This would be a tough one. If I still want to upgrade the Squier I could trade up to a MIM, but I’m not convinced that would be a good idea. For one, I’ve never been convinced that the MIM’s are worth $450, especially when you look at the quality of the Schecter and Ibanez. I think I’d go for the ART300 in this case.

What would you do?

I’m extremely intrigued at the prospect of upgrading the strat, but I’m really missing an acoustic and good hard rock guitar in my mixes today. To tell the truth, the X-factor is getting either plan through the budget approval process. What would you recommend?

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