One of my most popular posts was about the amazing guitar I had built in 1991 by Jake Savin and my plans to rebuild it into a more traditional Stratocaster type guitar. Many commenters decried the “destruction” of such a unique instrument and I defended my decision the best I could.
However, I was amazed when I got a posting by none other than my long lost friend Jake Savin, who found my posting while Googling himself. He was a little distraught at the thought of the best guitar he ever made being torn apart, and asked me if it was too late and if I might reconsider my plans. Here’s his well written blog posting about his discovery so you can hear his take on what happened. It’s amazing that, through the internet, he was able to find me, learn about my plans, and reconnect with a guitar he made many years earlier.
At this point, I had the guitar together without pickups, and it was amazing. I went to Guitar Center to look around and I played a ton of Strats, and frankly, I didn’t line any of them, not even a little. Then I went to the sacred “glass room” and took a custom shop relic off the wall. The clouds parted and a sunbeam came down and it was good. I had found the Strat that played exactly how I wanted it to. I have to say that even though my guitar wasn’t properly set up, it played at least as good as that $2500 Custom Shop strat. I was very psyched. Here’s a bad photo of what it looked like in this state.
So, that left me with a dilema. I had thought of Jake during the process, even thinking of sending the body to him when the new guitar was done. But now I was half way through and my concience was eating at me. It was then that I realized that all I had done (beyond tasks that only involved the simple unscrewing a few screws) was take the neck off the Savin guitar and installed it onto the new body. Well, I had done a bit more than that (including doing some repair work on the neck to make it work) and installing a neck on a guitar is somewhat involved. But I hadn’t taken apart the electronics or anything else that would have been irreversible.
After talking with Jake, I realized that I just wanted an awesome Strat and was just parting out the Savin guitar to get to that end. Plenty of other parts would get me to that goal. I could get a new neck from the same company that made the neck on the Savin guitar. And, there were plenty of people making custom pickups.
So we made a deal. Basically, he would indirectly buy me the parts I needed to make my dream strat, and I would put the Savin guitar back together and ship it to him. Since he really didn’t charge for his labor back when the guitar was originally made, I still feel a great bit of debt to him, and was glad that we were able to make a deal that pleased us both. His guitar stays together and I get the Strat I wanted. I have now ordered a neck from Warmoth and pretty much the rest of the hardware and pickups from Callaham – everything hand made here in the USA. I can’t wait till the parts get here and I get to assemble my new guitar and send the original back to re-meet its maker.
I’ll post photos when it is done.
