Picked up a Squire Stratocaster circa 1992 from a buddy of mine to try out, I like it so much I’m going to go ahead and buy it.

It has a white body, maple neck/headstock with a black pickguard or rather… had

Went to guitar center and bought a gold anodized pickguard, matching knobs, new potentiometers and tremolo arm (read: whammy bar). Upon taking off the pickguard and looking at the innards, I decided that I needed to do more to this than just a minor face lift, and that’s when Project Stratofeller started.

The wiring was a hack job at best. The previous-previous-previous owner(yes the guitar has been around the block a few times, and no it wasn’t wearing protection) at some point put in some “new” volume and tone potentiometers and used speaker wire to connect them to the pickups. Seeing as how I wasn’t merely going to solder some new pots (potentiometers) in place with the existing crappy wiring I went about procuring some. Here is a rough time line of the events that lead up to and followed:
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5:49 pm: arrive home from Guitar Center with shiny new parts
5:50 pm: crack open a beer and unwrap parts
5:53 pm: crack open second beer, curse “The King of Queens” for being the only thing on television
6:35 pm: head to Home Depot, pick up battery powered handheld soldering iron
7:20 pm: remove strings and pickguard, discover electronic spaghetti
7:45 pm: start de-soldering connections and making my way through the mess, figure out handheld soldering irons fucking suck
8:10 pm: head back to Home Depot to get proper soldering iron and to look for wire to replace the spaghetti with
8:35 pm: Discovering Home Depot doesn’t carry anything appropriate, call Guitar Center to see what they recommend, the clerk suggests Radio Shack
8:36 pm: After calling a friend, discover all of the Radio Shacks are closed or about to close.
9:30 pm: Look around the house for electronics that I can salvage wire out of, begin eyeing home computer suspiciously
9:40 pm: Decide that playing the Guitar is more important than my home PC; open it up and cut the wires off the power supply
9:50 pm: Begin re-wiring guitar
11:00 pm: Have everything soldered in and begin reassembling and restringing the guitar
11:20 pm: Plug the guitar in and discover it sounds like a completely new instrument
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Thus, project Stratofeller was born. Since I completed the above, I’ve begun shopping for a new neck/bridge and pickups. Going to hot rod my guitar and see what I can transform this humble Squire into. Looking into Floyd Rose bridges and Lace Sensor Pickups (looking at a few different types, I like the sound of the gold series, as that is what Clapton uses in Blackie). As far as the neck goes, I’m leaning towards a standard rosewood strat style neck, although I’m going to shop around and take a look at the “superstrat” necks (24 frets instead of 22) and see what the pro/cons are of going with that setup. It’ll get other upgrades as well, I plan on shielding the entire body cavity and wires with copper shielding. This will help eliminate hum and external interference.

Stay tuned for pics of the project and its progression, here is how she sits now though:

Project Stratofeller.