Fender American Performer Stratocaster

You won't be able to find an American Performer Strat in candy apple red at your local Guitar Center or Sweetwater or anywhere else for that matter. That's because I built this one myself. I've put together 3 or 4 Telecasters but this was my first and only Strat build. I call this an American Performer Strat because I literally bought that model's parts from Fender including the tuners, bridge, neck, body, pre-wired pickguard with pickups, jack plate and tremolo cover. The only difference aside from the color is I opted for Tex-Mex pickups instead of the Yosemite pickups which didn't crank my tractor.

This was a much harder build than a Tele mainly due to all the drilling and fitting required. If you look under the pickguard you'll see what I mean. I'm glad I made the effort though as the result is a beautiful, easy playing and great sounding axe. By the way, the amp shown in the first picture is my Mustang LT50.

Here are some general specs of the American Performer Strats (the ones with an asterisk don't apply to my guitar) :

• Yosemite single-coil pickups with flat-staggered pole pieces to increase output *
• Push-pull tone knob lets you add the neck pickup to any position, opening up a huge tonal range *
• Fender's Greasebucket master tone circuit rolls off highs without reducing gain *
• Vintage/modern ClassicGear tuners
• Neck pickup: Yosemite Strat single-coil (Alnico 4, 7.8K) *
• Middle pickup: Yosemite Strat RWRP single-coil (Alnico 4, 8.5K) *
• Bridge pickup: Yosemite Strat single-coil (Alnico 2, 8.9K) *
• 5-way blade pickup selector switch
• Master volume control
• Push-pull neck/middle tone control *
• Bridge tone control (Greasebucket tone circuit)
• Satin polyurethane body and neck finish
• Comfort-contoured alder body
• Modern "C" profile maple neck
• 9.5"-radius fingerboard with 22 jumbo frets
• 6-screw vintage-style Synchronized Tremolo bridge
• 1.685" synthetic bone nut
• Single-action truss rod with headstock access
• Nickel/chrome hardware
• Quality crafted in America