I've always been a big fan of Rush and Alex Lifeson. I wa slooking at some old pics and got the idea to build a replica of Lifeson's "Hentor Sportscaster" that he used through much of the early 80's. It started out as a Fender Strat but went through a lot of changes. I had nearly every part to build it except the body, a neck, and pickguard.
I got the body on ebay for $50 and the neck for $65 and started putting this together last week.
I finished this up late last night. It turned out better than I'd hoped and really sounds great.
The parts I used are Lace Holy Grail HG1000 neck and middle pickups, an old Bill Lawrence L500 bridge pickup, an early Floyd Rose, Planet Waves locking tuners, Mighty Mite neck, and a white alder Strat body of unknown brand.
The wiring scheme really worked good. The guitar is very versatile and every combination sounds unique and very nice.
The Gibson toggle is wired for bridge/bridge & neck/neck. The mini switch turns on the middle pickup, and the tone control has a push/pull switch to split coils on the bridge pickup. I'm very impressed with the L500 pickup. I've had it for about 20 years and for some reason I never installed it in anything.
The Floyd stays in tune great and I used a Floyd Rose trem stop set for dive only so I can use this guitar in different tunings.
I ordered the matte black pickguard from Warmoth with only the 2 single coil cuts. I wanted to put the pots and switches where I wanted them and I routed the bridge pickup hole so it would fit the Lawrence pickup exactly. The L500 is smaller and has more rounded corners than a standard humbucker.
I made the logo on inkjet waterslide decal paper. I got as close as I could to the original from what I could make out from the photo below.
I tried to get as close to Alex's guitar as I could but still set it up with a few more features that I like. The body is a little too white but for $50 I'm not gonna complain.
Here's pics of Alex's original:
And here are pics of my newly finished replica: